Modou Dieng Yacine

Senegal

"Dieng Yacine’s work investigates identity, migration, postcolonial history, and the intersection of African and Western cultures. Through layered materials and architectural motifs, he deconstructs façades and exposes negative space as a strategy to address absence, erasure, and memory.

Drawing on Léopold Sédar Senghor’s notion of “asymmetrical parallelism,” he builds compositions through rhythmic repetition in time and space. The physical structure of the canvas. often revealing its own framework, becomes part of the narrative, transforming surface into a site of reflection on history, displacement, and belonging.
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MEET

Modou Dieng Yacine

Born in Saint-Louis, Senegal, Modou Dieng Yacine studied at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Dakar before earning an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in California. He currently lives and works in Chicago and is co-founder of the curatorial platform Blackpuffin.

Working across painting, photography, collage, and mixed media, his practice incorporates materials such as denim, burlap, cardboard, vinyl records, and archival prints. His work is held in major collections including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Fondation Gandur, the Carlsberg Foundation, and other international institutions.

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