Market logics: how locality and mobility make artistic livelihoods in Dakar

This essay addresses two questions linking artists and market spaces in Dakar. First, what do access, proximity, and the representation of locality have to do with the art market? And, secondly, how do markets, networks, and mobility produce and structure artists as a professional category in Dakar? The analysis and theorisation proposed here aligns Dakar’s art market with the city’s other markets as a transactive and productive space. In doing so, this essay also contends with dismissive assessments about the art market in Dakar as inadequate or fledgling. The practices of two artists, Fally Sene Sow and Douts Ndoye, orient discussion of the relationship between artists and markets by focusing specifically on how artists gain mobility and access to multiple networks and opportunities by way of market logics.