Ladji Diaby: Godspeed You Black Emperor

Born in 2000, French-Malian artist Ladji Diaby graduated from the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. He works across sculpture, installation, image, and video.

A home is never defined solely by its walls; it is shaped by gestures, by objects that pass from one generation to the next. Diaby extends this logic to the exhibition itself, conceived as a temporary dwelling inhabited for a few weeks before disappearing in turn.

His practice begins with a gesture inherited from childhood: wandering through the flea markets of Ivry-sur-Seine with his mother, who transformed the furniture they brought home by covering it with fabrics, colours, and decorative patterns, giving each object a more personal and spiritual presence.

From this collection of found objects and the gleaning of images online, Ladji Diaby constructs assemblages through proximity: a pharaoh-shaped lamp beside a domestic object, Power Rangers alongside motifs drawn from family traditions. He readily compares his method to musical sampling—a principle he describes as “both a technique and a stylistic choice.”³

Each object becomes a talisman, deriving its value through its capacity to act collectively. Sometimes moving a single piece of furniture is enough to unsettle an entire system of values: a figure once considered demonic becomes protective, an ordinary object becomes sculpture. As Diaby explains, his installations emerge from the tension between different systems of value, a gesture he describes as “symptomatic of a world in decline,”² confronted with a reconstruction that remains uncertain.

Marking the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, the exhibition follows a series of recent institutional presentations, including at Lafayette Anticipations, Kunstverein Nürnberg, Fondation CAB, and in several exhibitions at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris.