Im/mobile

Selebe Yoon is pleased to present Im/mobile, a group exhibition with works by Mbaye Diop, Pap Souleye Fall, Tabita Rezaire, Bibi Seck, and Bassirou Wade. Between urban reality and alternative imaginaries, this exhibition explores the use of speculative fiction as a tool for reflecting on mobility: from the dynamics of movement in West African capitals and intercontinental circulation to the desire for space conquest.

From terrestrial mobility to celestial propulsion, in a leap from reality to fiction, Im/mobile highlights the tension between the reality of limited movement for some and the fantasy of mobility for others, from micro-movements within a circumscribed territory to excessive “planetarianism.” The works, made with everyday materials sourced in Senegal, revive popular imaginations and, with a certain humour and pragmatism, offer alternatives. At the intersection of design, functionality, and fantasy, Im/mobile investigates the power of fantasies to escape political and physical constraints in a world where the surveillance of human movement becomes authoritarian.

Mbaye Diop presents Pouss pouss (2025), a black-and-white animated film that traces the daily journey of a street coffee vendor in the Senegalese capital. The artist sketches the journey of a character moving around with his wheeled cart, attempting to make his way through a bustling metropolis. He also presents Espace trépasse (2021), a second animated film made in collaboration with Rémy Bender, which tells the story of two astronauts leaving Senegal. Similar to the fishing pirogue diverted to reach the European coast, the astronauts board a rocket-pirogue towards the sky. In a humorous style where myth and rationality coalesce, the work evokes the harshness of an economic and social context where the only act of freedom available becomes a flight into space.

Bassirou Wade, a designer based in the Niayes Thiokers neighbourhood of Dakar, transforms a motorcycle imported from China into a three-wheeled vehicle that can be converted into a boat, with the aim of making it possible for people with reduced mobility to navigate the city during the rainy season. Observing the city’s dysfunctional character, Wade develops a social design prototype, sensitive to spatial and environmental issues and capable of transforming the daily lives of a marginalised group, absent from urban policy considerations.

Pap Souleye Fall created a monumental peanut shell made from recycled materials such as cardboard and woven cans used to carry gasoline, oil and soap. Peanut monoculture, introduced to Senegal during the colonial period, played a fundamental role in the development of the country's economy, making it the world's leading exporter in the aftermath of independence. Drawing on this history of economic glory and exploited resources, Pap Souleye presents this sculpture as a ‘dead pixel’, a speculation, an absurdity at the intersection of the digital and the physical. Disconcerting in its scale, the peanut is stripped of its nature, freed from its power of historical enslavement and resembling a vessel ready to take off towards new narratives.

While working as an automotive designer at Renault, Bibi Seck conceived Pakka City in the 1990s, a city suspended high above the ground where people seeking oxygen can take refuge. Through sculptures, animations, and a series of comic-style drawings, Bibi Seck conceives an aeronautical universe composed of flying cars, stations that filter polluted air, and floating vernacular architecture, in which the dysfunctions of today's cities are resolved through the most sophisticated technological inventions.

Finally, in 2019, Tabita Rezaire made the film Mamelles ancestrales based on the megalithic architectures of Senegambia. A circular installation of stones surrounds the projection on the ground. Through a series of testimonies from astronomers, archaeologists, and local residents, the film addresses contemporary issues in space research, contrasting them with popular knowledge, religious beliefs, and mystical practices. It blends ancestral cosmological knowledge with scientific knowledge about the connections between heaven and earth, the world of the living and the dead.