Ladji Diaby: Godspeed you black emperor

The exhibition begins with the idea of an unfinished mass: a gesture that remains open, allowing the world to continue beyond the limits of the exhibition. It brings together objects whose material qualities suggest possibilities beyond their apparent functions. Through their arrangement in space, the works explore how materials can generate associations and forms of transformation.

Diaby’s approach acknowledges uncertainty. Rather than presenting fixed interpretations, the works leave space for observation and association. They draw on personal and collective memories, including domestic environments, recorded music and religious imagery, through which familiar objects acquire new associations.

The space can be understood as a “body of daydream”: a domestic environment transformed through the recollection and reinterpretation of memories. Objects function simultaneously as recognisable things and as carriers of meanings that extend beyond their original uses.

The exhibition also considers objects historically displaced or reclassified through colonial processes, examining how their material presence can contribute to their recontextualisation. Within this framework, the figure of the messenger provides a recurring point of reference, understood as a vehicle for the transmission of time, memory and meaning. The questions raised by the exhibition remain open, inviting continued consideration of uncertainty, memory and transformation.