(SenePlus) – Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop, now installed in Paris, continues his artistic exploration by embarking on sculpture with the prestigious house Bernardaud. This new creation, called “Touki”, marks a turning point in the journey of this multiple facets artist.
“This Senegalese term means traveling, this can even evoke exile. I chose it in tribute to those who, often by constraint, are forced to leave without being always welcomed,” explains the artist in an interview with the weekend echoes. This choice echoes his own trajectory, he who left Senegal to settle in France in December 2022. “Touki is my poetic way of talking about the right to mobility,” he adds.
This collaboration with Bernardaud represents for Omar Victor Diop the realization of an old ambition: “The meeting with Bernardaud allowed me to realize an old child’s dream: to make an object”. His sculpture is inspired by “the imagery of Nigerian and Egyptian totemic representations of the pharaohs of the 15th dynasty (8th centuries BC)”.
The photographer now shares his life between France and Senegal, developing a particular attachment to his adopted country: “If Dakar is my mother, France is becoming my love,” he says. Installed in the 9th Parisian arrondissement, “at the foot of the Butte Montmartre, very close to the Goutte d’Or”, he particularly appreciates this district which he describes as “Petit Dakar” with his Senegalese tailors which remind him of those of his native country.
-The indigo color occupies a preponderant place in the creations of the photographer. “I really like indigo, one of the main colors of the elegant Dakar residents,” he said, evoking the Bazin, this tissue “complexion according to the technique of the ‘tie and dye’, often with indigo”. This shade is loaded with personal memories: “The natural indigo retains a smell close to that of ink. A memory of my mother’s boubus and my father’s caftans.”
The photographer also has a special link with Japan, where he recently exhibited as part of the Kyotography Festival. His passion for colors and materials flourished there: “The first time I went to Japan, I brought back a suitcase full of indigo coupons”. Japanese camellias today adorn his Parisian balcony, testifying to his attachment to nature, he who confided as a child wanting to become a gardener.
“There is no silence in my life. Whether it’s coming from my phone, or that she trotting me in my head, I live from music,” admits Omar Victor Diop, describing himself as “agnostic in the matter”. Admirer of Ravel, he says he appreciates the composer “both for the work and for his relationship to creation”, an approach he shares: “Creation is full of doubts and can be painful at times.”
Omar Victor Diop’s “Touki” sculpture is part of a limited edition of porcelain heads made in the workshops of Bernardaud in Limoges. The artist is currently exhibiting at the Kyotography Festival until May 12, at the Völklinger Hütte Museum in Sarrebruck with “The True Size of Africa” until August 17, 2025, and at the Museum of Man in Paris with “Wax” until September 7.
