Fatoumata Bintou Kandé, better known as Fatou Kandé Senghor, is an artist and filmmaker working in creative documentary, television series, and now fiction. She also works as a video trainer for students as well as young people facing learning difficulties. She lives and works in Thiès, Senegal. Her landmark documentary, Giving Birth, is a portrait of the enigmatic sculptor Seni Camara from Casamance. The film was selected for the prestigious Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art. She has published several articles in journals on themes such as gender, urban cultures, and African cinema. Twenty years ago, she founded Waru Studio, an art space in Dakar where young artists, filmmakers, and researchers come together to explore the intersection of art, technology, and politics in Africa. Over the years, she has engaged in significant collaborations, including working alongside Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène on his film Faat Kiné (a tribute to Senegalese women’s entrepreneurship), and with German filmmaker Wim Wenders on The Invisible (a documentary about sexual violence against women during the civil war in the Congo). In 2015, she published WALABOK: An Oral History of Hip Hop in Senegal with Amalion Publishing, an anthology covering two generations of artists who shaped the Senegalese hip-hop movement. This anthology later became the foundation for a television series project that received an award at the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO). Her artistic practice combines photography, film, public installations, writing, and research to explore intimate concepts such as identity, community, religion, history, and geography. What drives her is documenting social transformations in order to reveal how so-called sacred texts, poetry, and oral traditions inform and shape our understanding of contemporary life. Her perspective is unique, shaped by extensive Pan-African and global experience. Coming from a family of diplomats, her extended stays in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Benin, and Togo exposed her to diverse cultural and linguistic environments.
My Work
She likes to describe herself as a size-12 wrench — a tool that is useful for everything. That, for her, is the true vocation of an artist. While she often works with a camera, she can just as easily surprise audiences with a multimedia performance.
Although Fatou Kandé Senghor’s work is deeply rooted in Africa, it is not confined to the continent and cannot be limited to any geographic boundaries. A traveler, radio host, television series creator, advocate for women’s rights, talent mentor, and educator, she embodies multiple roles. Fatou Kandé Senghor has also worked with some of the greatest filmmakers, including Ousmane Sembène, from whom she inherited a strong sense of commitment, and Wim Wenders, who influenced her approach to blending documentary and fiction.
Her concerns are those of the world and form the foundation of her artistic approach. The struggles and well-being of our societies, our hopes and disillusionments, the challenges and achievements that shape who we are — real issues we face every day, for which we constantly seek and reinvent solutions. These conversations, these encounters with our fears and our actions, are what Fatou translates into a body of work combining photography, film, public installations, writing, and research to explore deeply personal concepts. She is particularly drawn to the intimate dimension of human experience — identity, community, religion, history, and geography. What drives her is the desire to capture social transformations that reveal individuals in their depth and complexity.