Khalifa Ababacar Dieng

Khalifa Dieng is a graduate from the Ecole Nationale des Beaux de Dakar, Senegal (1990-1994), with a major in environment, space management for children including Senegalese tradition inspired games creation. In 1996, he won a scenography scholarship to the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels de La Cambre in Belgium. The same year he earned experience in Décor building at the Ateliers de Décor de l’Opéra Royal de Wallonie, Liege (Belgium).

Khalifa Ababacar Dieng is a complete artist: scenographer, painter, designer but also curator. Highly acclaimed visual artist internationally, Lifadieng his artist name wasn’t predestined to art but the quest of finding equilibrium, brought him to not only be a technician in space assessment but also a contemporary artist. His relation to space and the society induced him to find artistic solutions to look for balance – or to avoid dysfunctions - in a world where space can be challenging for people to be comfortable in and/or to access.

He practices all kinds of Art forms except video media, creating interactives and sophisticated installations. His decade old experience at the Moribana Museum in Dakar, shaped up his field of action in art understanding notion of space, artwork within the space and being a curator. Numbers, symbols and messages triggers his art expression - nothing spontaneously-  sculpting space which conditions the state of his artwork. His atelier is in Dakar where he was born.

In 2006, he earned the Prize of the European Union at the African contemporary Art Biennial, Dak’Art. In 2008, he earned a residency at Belas Artes Multicultural Center & Art Gallery in Saint-Louis, Missouri (USA), an exhibition curated by Jackie Lewis Harris, PhD from the University of Missouri. He currently is the scenographer of Dakar biennial, 3 editions in a row since 2010 including2016, the 12th edition of Dak’Art, in which he supervised the ancient Senegalese court room and the IFAN Theodore Monod museum with more than a hundred artworks coming from around the world.He also co-curated Dak’Art off exhibitions with Mauro Petroni.