The exhibition presents a constellation of two key trilogies – bodies of work that are thematically related or stem from a particular period in her oeuvre. The first “The Citadel” features the series Sahel Gris (2013), At the Wall (2014) and Metropolis (2016) and the second “Remember to Forget” consists of the series: Call Me When You Get There (2020), Léthé (2021) and Sama Guent Guii (2021). These works are central to Niang’s journey as a self-taught artist whose inward-looking process of image-making actively challenges the conventions of documentary and portraiture photography.

Self as a Forgotten Monument is the first museum solo exhibition by Mame-Diarra Niang presented by Zeitz MOCAA. Organised as a survey of the artist’s practice over the past decade, the project brings together significant bodies of work in dialogue in a spatial choreography. Niang’s prolific practice is characterised by an exploratory, abstract and subversive approach to lens-based media working across photography, moving image and immersive audio-visual installation. The title of the exhibition is an invitation to embrace the artist’s notion of “Plasticity of the Territory”, a concept that is foundational to her practice and asserts an inner territory that names life as an experience in and of itself. In her own words, “I have come to think of the self as a territory made of well-curated memories and erasures (…) – a place where being itself is a forgotten monument; where even the most persistent conception of identity dissolves in front of us.”