Khamekaye

“The Khamekaye series was executed in the Grande-Côte, a 150 km-long stretch of Senegal’s coastline between the northern outskirts of Dakar and the River Senegal estuary. Every now and then on this big expanse of beaches and sand dunes, one can make out structures made up of branches, plastic, fishing nets and various objects, rising up out of the sea, the sand and the vegetation.

The Khamekaye are signs, great landmarks placed along the shore to mark places where there are villages further inland. They have a very specific purpose; a practical, domestic raison d’être. Their locations are not random, and their presence is not fanciful or unimportant. They make the locations of villages visible both from the sea (there are busy fishing zones all along this coast) and from the shore. Khamekaye is a word meaning “landmark” in Wolof, one of the most widely spoken languages in Senegal, and it is used exclusively to refer to these beach signals.”