saint louis saint louis follows a return journey between two archipelagos with the same name, one the former French colonial capital of Sénégal and the other in Paris. Narrated from the artist's perspective, saint louis saint louis charts the emergence, reign, and disappearance of the signare—a term for women perceived to gain property, status, and power through marriage to European men during French colonial West Africa from the late 1600s to the early 1900s.
In the 21st century, you returned to the archipelagos Saint Louis of Sénégal, and Saint Louis of Paris to unearth vestiges of signares—women once at the centre of Occidental French West African commerce and society. Through the night, through the whispers of your aunts and nieces, through the institutions that house present-day French "patrimoine (cultural heritage)," you fell into a spiral between colonial presents and the past.
— Yana Dombrowsky M'Baye
