The curators of the French Pavillion are Céline Kopp, director of Magasin, the National Center for Contemporary Art in Grenoble, and Cindy Sissokho, curator, cultural producer and writer.
Marie Claire Messouma Manlanbien will represent the Ivory Coast at the Venice Biennale.
The title of the exhibition, "The Blue Note", refers to that ability that Africans have had, despite the distance from their homeland, to transform despair, frustration and the loss of the “mother tongue” into an act of resilience.
By “blue note,” we mean precisely that which enabled the telling of something still unknown to Westerners: loneliness, fatigue but also hope.
"It is the note that allowed Africans to survive and live". (The Blue Note, La Biennale di Venezia).
The curator of the pavilion is Simon Njami.
The exhibitors: Jems Koko Bi, François Xavier Gbré, Sadikou Oukpedjo, Franck Abd-Bakar Fanny, Marie Claire Messouma Manlanbien