Recorded March 3, 2017, in Timken Lecture Hall on the San Francisco campus of California College of the Arts (CCA).
Manthia Diawara was born in Mali, West Africa. Diawara was educated in Guinea-Conakry, Bamako (Mali), and Paris before emigrating to the United States to pursue his studies.
Diawara will reflect on the work of the American artist David Hammons in the context of a year-long series of events organized by the Wattis Institute about and around the work of said artist.
More specifically, he will focus on Sheep Raffle, the artist's contribution to the Dak’Art Biennial in Senegal in 2004 and will reflect on how Hammons’ work approaches myth, intuition, opacity, and the affinities it shares with the idea of the poet/philosopher Edouard Glissant.
Diawara is a prolific writer and filmmaker. His essays and opinions in French and English on art, cinema, and politics have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Liberation, Mediapart, and Artforum.
He is the author of two acclaimed memoirs: In Search of Africa (Harvard University Press) and We Won’t Budge: An African in the World (Basic Books). He has also published several books on African and African American cinema.