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The Production of Social Space as Artwork 245
the logic of development strategies through the utility of art. In so doing, its
central mission has been to “disentangle modernism’s historical contradiction
between art’s claim to aesthetic autonomy and its ambitions for social
relevance.” 36 The sustained ongoing project at Hamdallaye attempts, through
collaboration between the members of the group and the villagers, to concentrate
on the circulation of not only the symbolic goods of artistic skills
but also on the strategic transfer of vital skills from the artists to the village
community. However, this transfer of skills is directed to ensure that the villagers
retain creative control of their artistic labor. To empower the isolated
villagers and thereby increase their economic capacity through artistic skills
not only proWts the villagers, it also helps them bridge the social distance
between them as artists and the villagers who perceive artists from the point
of view of being a privileged urban elite identiWed with elements of the
state. According to Kan Si, one of the founding members:
Huit Facettes in rural Senegal is much more the story of a procedure or process which, as it
unfolds, has given us (contemporary Senegalese artists living in the city) a point of anchorage
or reconciliation with the part of society that feeds us and from which we were cut
off. One particular elite rejoins its roots in the same sociocultural (Senegalese) context. 37
Each year since 1996, the project with the villagers in Hamdallaye
begins with a series of public discussions that then move into the phase
of workshops. The workshops are designed to transform basic skills into professional
skills—for example, in under-glass painting, ceramics, batik dyeing
process, carving, weaving, embroidery. Depending of the level of work needed
to accomplish the training at hand, the workshops are normally conducted
over a period of one to two weeks. The concentration on speciWc kinds of
skills is arrived at based on their utility and creativity, but also on dialogue
with members of the community. Women are especially targeted as a group
who can proWt from the link with the artists. For Huit Facettes the planning
of each workshop is connected to the utility of certain creative systems (they
have to be accessible, inexpensive, skillful, sustainable over a long period,
and draw from the exchange of knowledge between the two groups). What
the artists offer, in addition, are access to material, advertisement of the
results, and access to the urban market. Above all, the autonomy of the
Hamdallaye residents in deciding what is most useful for them in the collaboration
is important for the critical discourse of Huit Facettes. The group
tries to avoid the hierarchical structure of NGO development work. This is
partly to stimulate the agency and subjective capacity of each participant in
the workshop, to help them establish an individual expression. But above
all it is to avoid at all cost the possibility of dependency. By paying critical
attention to the idea of subjectivity Huit Facettes works in the interstices of