Seyni Awa Camara (1945-2026): An artist beyond the myth

With the death of Seyni Awa Camara, a grave will join a grave. She was a mystery, and continues to be for many who stopped to read her legend. With her death on January 25, her work remains to bear witness to what she has in fact always been: an artist

The late Seyni Awa Camara had one of those epic stories that are told in fables. Legend has it that the woman who died at the age of 81 last Monday, January 25, was kidnapped by spirits in the middle of the forest. The little girl is said to have been with her twins, she being the only girl in the quadruplet. She would return from this curious kidnapping months later, armed with a figurine, the sciences of ceramic sculpture and a silence that supports the myth. Her gift will first be revealed when, for this seemingly banal art in her native Casamance, the young Seyni Awa Camara sculpts and plunges statuettes into the pyre, in secret. The rumors comment on an illumination, an accuracy, a genius, a myth, a superior soul.

Beyond this “episode”, of which we still do not know whether it is fabulous or historic, remains the artist Seyni Awa Camara. Her work as a contemporary ceramic sculptor remains as testimony to a singular talent. “She renewed traditional African pottery by responding to a transnational practice. Her audience was international,” deciphers art critic Massamba Mbaye, bringing passions around the deceased back to ground level. For Oumar Sall (Umàr Sali), author and art critic, there is a part of ourselves that is reflected in each of the sculptures of the Potière de Casamance. Its many-headed perspective, he thinks, reminds us that identity is plural and shifting. “We owe her immense gratitude for these multiple faces that she gave to the invisible, these figures which, now immobile, continue to observe us and bring the sacred to the heart of our daily lives,” observes Umàr Sali, who describes there an artistic function and legacy in all their regularity.

Le fact: Seyni Awa Camara is an artist

Seyni Awa Camara remains an artist. His plays made him known throughout the world. When, at the end of the 1980s, the French art historian and collector Jean-Hubert Martin and André Magnin exhibited the potter in Paris, the art world salivated.

Purists exult at discovering an authentic artist who augurs great odds on the art market. They won’t be mistaken. Paris, New York, Brussels, Geneva… have welcomed his ceramic sculptures. Books have decoded his art. “Solitude of clay” by the anthropologist Michèle Odeye-Finzi, in particular. The multidisciplinary artist Fatou Kandé Senghor presented her to us through the documentary film “Giving Birth”, as well as the playwright Francesco Biamonte in a sound documentary “Seyni Awa Camara, hatching of a legend”. These are all people who approached her, in Bignona where she lived. Seynabou Guèye was with Seyni Awa Camara, in 2024. “The municipality of Bignona was not really aware of his stature, I believe. They were amazed when the diplomatic corps paraded there,” recalls the director of the Ourrouss Gallery, who put together an exhibition of 18 pieces by the potter at the end of the visit (Réalités d’un myth, January 2025). For S. Guèye, Seyni Awa Camara, through “her magnificent work”, was a continuation of the characteristic totems of the Nile, Niger, imperial Mali, etc. Why had she cloistered herself in Bignona? Seyni Awa Camara told S. Gueye that she was disgusted with trips and outings after being cheated during a stay in Belgium.
“There is a whole myth. Rumors spread that she didn’t actually make the pottery, that she was a possessed witch. But his talent is certain. Her children were going to buy the clay, but at 80 years old she checked the quality herself, tested and validated,” testifies the gallery owner. Seynabou Guèye remembers a warm, very human, humble lady. “In her hall, she had a table of vegetables of the day. She had to sell them, but she offered them to more modest housewives,” she confides.
Carla Gueye, a 29-year-old visual artist, had the chance to approach the late artist during the residency which gave the collective exhibition “Comme un oeil qui would voir” (May 2024). “Seyni Awa and her family were appreciative that I worked with my hands. They invited me, after this first visit, to do something with the earth. At first, she waited for me to leave for lunch to come and watch what I was doing. Then she joined me, worked with me and commentated. The family kept telling me that I was the only one who worked with them,” said Carla Guèye with pride.
For Carla Guèye, Seyni Awa Camara is a strong feminine personality who has a real message about motherhood, intimacy and femininity. “What resonates” with what she does. The gallery owner Seynabou Guèye suggests, by virtue of the symbol she represents, that the State acquire her works and build a museum.

By Mamadou Oumar KAMARA