With a mother from Sweden and a father from Burkina Faso, visual artist and filmmaker Theresa Traoré Dahlberg grew up with a dual perspective. Her work as an artist often brings together her two worlds, such as her bronze sculpture "Hakili", inspired by a Burkinabé sculpture of a hare she found in Sweden's ethnographic museum. Traoré Dahlberg's first solo exhibition in Paris, "Idrix III", is showing at the Andréhn-Schiptjenko gallery. She's also a documentary filmmaker with a love of "everyday stories". Her film "Taxi Sister" follows one of the rare female taxi drivers in Dakar, Senegal, while "Ouaga Girls" offers a glimpse into the lives of a group of young girls becoming car mechanics in Ouagadougou. She spoke to FRANCE 24's Alison Sargent.
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00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:27 Her documentaries explore class, feminism,
00:30 and post-colonial power structures.
00:32 Her sculptures examine the historical weight
00:35 of the raw materials themselves.
00:37 Teresa Traoré-Dahlberg is both a visual artist and a filmmaker.
00:41 She grew up between two homelands, Sweden
00:43 and Burkina Faso.
00:45 Her first solo exhibition in Paris, Idriks III,
00:48 is showing through March 16 at the Andrei Shepchenko Gallery.
00:53 Teresa Traoré-Dahlberg, thank you so much for being here.
00:56 Thank you.
00:56 And congratulations on your show.
00:58 What does it mean to you to be having your first solo
01:01 exhibition here in Paris?
01:02 It's great.
01:03 It's great, because it's definitely a melting pot.
01:07 So yesterday, we had the opening,
01:09 and there was people from all over the world coming,
01:13 and also friends and family from Burkina Faso, from Sweden.
01:17 So it's really-- yeah, it's a big thing.
01:21 Yeah, that's so nice.
01:22 Let's talk about your bronze sculptures, notably Idriks.
01:25 I know it was inspired by a bird in an African folktale.
01:29 And it was also made in collaboration
01:31 with a foundry in Burkina Faso.
01:34 Yes, it's both Hakeli, as you could see as well,
01:37 and the hare.
01:38 And Idriks are inspired by my grandmother's tales.
01:43 And for me, the material itself is very important.
01:48 And the bronze, it's melted different bronze materials
01:51 from Burkina Faso.
01:53 And yeah, the place itself, it's very important.
02:01 You mentioned the hare.
02:02 I like those sculptures a lot, too.
02:03 They were positioned as if they were gossiping or something
02:06 in the exhibition altogether.
02:07 What do the bird and the hare represent
02:10 in your grandmother's stories?
02:12 Yeah, it started with--
02:13 I was invited to the archive in the Ethnographic Museum
02:17 in Stockholm.
02:18 And when going there, I found a small, small little hare,
02:23 2.2 centimeters about, that was made in bronze.
02:26 And it came from Burkina Faso.
02:30 And it came from Bobo di Lasso, where my grandmother is from.
02:34 And she had just recently passed away.
02:38 And so I was really trying to remember her.
02:42 And when thinking of her, she was very known to me
02:48 and to our family as a storyteller.
02:50 She was telling stories.
02:51 And she gathered the family to tell stories.
02:54 So I started gathering her stories,
02:56 but also working with the shape of the hare.
02:59 And when working with it, I went to Burkina Faso
03:02 because I go back and forth.
03:04 And my family is there as well.
03:06 And when showing this bronze sculpture to the bronze workers,
03:10 everyone gathered and looked at it
03:12 and was really amazed about the shape
03:15 that they haven't seen in the Burkina context
03:18 for a very long time.
03:19 Let's take a listen to what the gallery's director,
03:22 Celine Andreen, had to say about your work.
03:24 She was interviewed by Valentin Erba.
03:26 The universe of her work is really about transformation,
03:39 transformation of different materials,
03:41 transformations of different artifacts,
03:43 transformation of ideas.
03:45 It's a very poetic universe.
03:46 [MUSIC PLAYING]
03:50 Different kinds of technical ways of productions
03:57 and then in this exhibition.
03:59 What she's been doing here that you can see right behind me
04:02 is a bronze foundry that has been done in Burkina Faso,
04:06 which is bronze but also other kinds of materials
04:09 that have other origins.
04:11 Could be weapons, could be things like that.
04:14 [MUSIC PLAYING]
04:17 So Teresa, you were telling us about your hair sculpture,
04:24 but you didn't get to tell us about Idriks, who is the bird.
04:27 Tell us about that one.
04:28 Yeah, it was also inspired by a story that my grandma did.
04:32 And I remember a melody and that I could sing the melody,
04:37 but I didn't know what was said.
04:39 So I asked my father about it.
04:41 And he told me that it was about--
04:44 to make a long story short, it was
04:46 a girl that became friends with a bird, a year of drought.
04:53 And when she sang a specific song,
04:55 the bird did like this and out came seeds.
04:57 So she took it back to the society.
05:00 And she kept doing that for a couple of days
05:02 and everyone was happy.
05:03 And then after a while, they started wondering,
05:05 what's the secret?
05:06 How do we get to--
05:07 how do we get--
05:09 how does she do it?
05:11 But she couldn't say because it was a secret.
05:13 So they went after her into the woods.
05:16 And they got the recipe.
05:20 They saw her singing the song and out came food.
05:24 So they took the bird and they sang the song over and over
05:27 again.
05:28 And the bird became weaker and weaker.
05:30 And once everyone had food, they wanted more.
05:33 It's the human greed.
05:34 So they wanted meat.
05:36 So they started-- they went out to chase.
05:39 And the bird that flew slower than the others got shot.
05:43 And that was the bird that gave them food.
05:45 And to me, this is connected to long-term thinking,
05:49 to also how we use the resources,
05:53 the short-term thinking, but also about the industries.
05:57 I work a lot with industry materials,
05:59 about industries that are constantly moving globally
06:04 and always have to become bigger and bigger,
06:06 accelerate in a specific way.
06:10 So for me, this is all connected about thinking
06:13 about the state of the world.
06:15 Yeah, absolutely.
06:16 And it's something we see a lot in your visual--
06:19 your work as a visual artist.
06:20 You also make documentaries, though.
06:22 Your first feature-length film, "Waga Girls,"
06:24 is about a group of teenage girls
06:26 becoming car mechanics in Burkina Faso.
06:30 It came out in 2017.
06:32 Let's take a look.
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07:05 And Theresa, your first film was also
07:06 about women in sort of the world of cars.
07:09 "Taxi Sister" followed one of the only 15 female taxi
07:13 drivers in Dakar.
07:14 What drew you to each of those stories for your documentaries?
07:18 Well, there were several years between them.
07:20 And when doing "Taxi Sister," I really
07:22 needed a woman in a West African country
07:27 that was a protagonist that I could look up to, a hero.
07:31 And she was really someone that I followed her
07:34 in her everyday life.
07:35 And she had taken a choice to go against the norm,
07:38 to do something that wasn't expected of her as a woman.
07:41 And she wasn't always--
07:43 she received applause on the street,
07:45 but she also received a lot of knocks along the way.
07:48 So it took a very much steady decision every day
07:53 to keep doing what she was doing.
07:55 And she was the one supporting her family with her work.
07:58 But when doing "Waga Girls," it was actually
08:01 the opposite that attracted me, because it's
08:03 girls that ended up between chairs in society,
08:06 but that are in a car mechanic school and are teenagers.
08:13 They're still young, and they don't know what they want.
08:16 They didn't necessarily choose to be pioneers within this job
08:21 that a lot of people had a lot of opinions about.
08:23 So they were really in a shift in life at the same time
08:26 as Burkina Faso was also in a shift politically.
08:30 It was a year of transition after the president
08:34 had been for 27 years.
08:36 So it was a lot of a state in the air in "Waga Dugu,"
08:42 but also in the girls' lives.
08:44 Yeah.
08:44 And is that what you wanted to show?
08:46 Or what did you want people to kind of come away
08:48 from that documentary understanding
08:50 about those young girls?
08:51 Yeah, for me, it's very--
08:52 I like everyday stories, and I like
08:54 to come close in the details of the everyday.
08:57 And when going to film school for a lot of years,
09:03 there were very few films that I got
09:04 to see where it was not about poverty or extreme war
09:12 or extreme situations.
09:14 And I lacked the everyday story.
09:17 And there's been a lot of films made, though.
09:19 I mean, Burkina Faso is one of the film countries
09:22 in the world, which festback every other year.
09:26 Film, for me, has always been very close.
09:29 But I really love to follow characters
09:32 in their everyday life.
09:34 And I know you're also inspired by science fiction, which
09:36 is sort of far from everyday life.
09:38 You like to imagine alternative futures
09:41 and new socio-political structures.
09:43 This is sort of a difficult question,
09:45 but what might your ideal world look like?
09:47 What would some of the elements in it be?
09:49 That's a huge question.
09:50 How would the utopian world be?
09:53 And I think I'm finding it out.
09:54 And I want everyone to keep also trying
09:58 to focus on what are the possibilities,
10:01 and how can we actually change things for the better
10:05 in different ways?
10:06 And Theresa, we ask all of our guests
10:07 to choose another work of art that's inspired them lately.
10:10 And you chose the film, If Only I Could Hibernate.
10:12 It's about a family living in Mongolia.
10:15 Tell us about it and what drew you to it.
10:17 Now, this is a film that's out in cinemas right now
10:19 and that I haven't seen yet.
10:21 So it's a film that I want to see.
10:24 And it's a Mongolian director.
10:28 It's our first long film.
10:30 And it's about everyday life in Mongolia,
10:32 about these kids that are left from their parents,
10:41 but at the same time, he's going through a physics test.
10:46 And yeah, I read a little bit, and I heard a lot about it.
10:49 And it's something I really want to see.
10:51 And it's Alexandra Strauss who's editing it,
10:55 who is the person that I've been working with,
10:58 with Wagga Girls, and who I usually work close with
11:01 in different collaborations.
11:02 And she has also edited I'm Not Your Negro with Raoul Peck
11:07 and Exterminate the Brutes.
11:08 So I know that when she's involved with the project,
11:10 it's usually interesting.
11:12 So this is a film I'm looking forward to seeing.
11:14 Sounds like a personal project also about everyday life.
11:17 So echoes of your work as well.
11:19 But another place in the world that I've never been.
11:22 It's interesting.
11:23 Well, we'll end with a look then at If Only I Could Hibernate.
11:26 Theresa Traurig-Dahlberg, thank you again so much.
11:30 A reminder that her show Idriks 3 is running through mid-March
11:34 at the André Schipchenko Gallery here in Paris.
11:37 Thanks so much for watching.
11:38 The news is coming up after this.
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