Galerie Kemboury Gallery in Dakar

Editorial Profile

Founded in November 1996 by Thérèse Turpin Diatta in the Point E district — at the corner of rue du Canal IV and rue des Écrivains — Galerie Kemboury has operated for nearly three decades as one of the few continuously active private exhibition spaces within contemporary art in Dakar, functioning as a commercial gallery with a sustained commitment to West African painting, sculpture, and works on paper. Its program navigates between two registers without reducing either: the promotion of emerging Senegalese artists — extended through a smaller, more experimental annex near the Olympic pool dedicated to younger creators — and the continued visibility of senior figures, including retrospective and posthumous tributes to painters such as Ibrahima Kébé and Diatta Seck, the latter associated with the École de Dakar, the post-independence movement that gave institutional shape to a distinctly Senegalese modernism. The gallery's aesthetic range encompasses peinture sous-verre alongside academic and mixed-media practices, marking a deliberate refusal to separate vernacular traditions from formally trained work — a position that distinguishes it from galleries operating within a more strictly contemporary or international frame.

Its regional scope is equally specific: Galerie Kemboury has consistently shown artists from Côte d'Ivoire, Togo, Mali, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Bénin, Nigeria, Congo, and Cape Verde, often in group configurations that position it as a node in a broader West and Central African circuit rather than a purely local venue. A recurrent presence in the Off programme of the Dakar Biennale and in the Partcours circuit, it contributes actively to the ecosystem of galleries in Dakar while extending its reach through hors-les-murs projects — including exhibitions at the Pyramide du Groupe Atépa in Mermoz and at the Gare de Dakar — that complement the work of institutions in Dakar anchoring the city's contemporary art infrastructure. A planned relocation toward the Petite Côte, paired with continued off-site programming in the capital, points to the institutional flexibility that has defined Galerie Kemboury's longevity within Dakar's shifting cultural geography.