Kadiatou Diallo and Nicolle Aïcha Bussien
Foto: Erik Dettwiller
Kadiatou Diallo lives and works in Basel as a freelance curator, mediator and cultural practitioner. Her academic background is in cognitive psychology and the fine arts. In her work, she focuses on artistic practice as a tool for transformative social processes and knowledge generation. Together with Dominique Malaquais, she founded SPARCK – Space for Pan-African Research, Creation and Knowledge in 2008. In 2016, she came to Basel from Cape Town as an Atelier Mondial scholarship holder and guest curator at the Klingental exhibition space. In addition to curatorial and collaborative projects, since 2019 Kadiatou has been working as a research employee at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Basel and as a lecturer for the Master in Arts in Public Spheres (MAPS) at the Valais School of Art in Sierre.
Foto: David Scholl
Nicolle Aïcha Bussien (*1991) lives and works in Zurich. In 2015, she completed her Bachelor in Fine Arts at HKB. Her work has been recognized with the Freiraumbeitrag of the Canton of Zurich (2024), the Förderpreis of the Canton of Solothurn (2023), the Werkstipendium of the Canton of Zurich (2022), as well as the Jungck Artist Prize and a travel and research scholarship from the City of Bern (both in 2020). Residencies have taken her to places such as the Cité internationale des Arts in Paris (2025), the Dogo Residenz für Neue Kunst in Toggenburg (2021), and the Prättigauer Konsulat in Warsaw (2020). She has held solo exhibitions at Stadtgalerie Bern (2023), Projektraum G10 in Darmstadt (2022), Offspace Lokal-int in Biel (2022), Kunstraum dreiviertel in Bern (2022), and Kunstraum Aarau (2020). She has also participated in group exhibitions, including at ZKM (Karlsruhe), The Kitchen (New York), Gallery 44 (Toronto), Kunsthalle Bern, Spielact (Geneva), NewYorck at Bethanien (Berlin), and the Foundation Bally (Lugano).
Project
The focus of the coaching is the artistic project Chez Hamza (working title). The starting point is a backdrop from a photo studio in Tata (Sahara, Morocco), depicting an alpine snow scene. The project explores this backdrop as an image of an exoticized "elsewhere."
In the coaching sessions, we reflect on the reproduction and appropriation of Eurocentric perspectives. The goal of the mentoring is to develop an appropriate artistic form for Chez Hamza. The project should either be completed or, at the very least, a clear plan for its completion should be developed.