Ladji Diaby

Ladji Diaby uses furniture as vitrines for discarded objects, each work becoming a symbolic collaboration between the artist and an object's unknown former owner. While these objects and artifacts carry little material value, they are perceived differently installed in an art space. Through the act of exhibition, the artist interrogates the systems which determine cultural value in the West. 

The question - Who's Gonna Save the World? — 

is rhetorical. Ladji Diaby considers the collapse of the world to be a necessary step towards its reconstruction. The artist proposes that, by embracing the world's impending downfall, we can move toward new utopias and avoid repeating past failures. For Diaby, the world's salvation is not the responsibility of any one individual; liberation can only come about through collective action. 

Taken together, these works function as talismans from this imagined new world in which the artist's political, spiritual, and artistic aspirations converge. Diaby's devotion to his materials arises from a belief in their generative power - these are not only objects but mechanisms of self-liberation — tools that allow him to pursue a life beyond the destiny prescribed by Western social hierarchies for a Malian man of Muslim faith living in France. 

Curator: Ben Broome

Cover image: Ladji Diaby, untitled (2025)

With Libération, Les Inrockuptibles and Télérama.