After being expelled from France for his subversive communist activities, the Senegalese Maoist activist and artist Omar Blondin Diop (1946-73) returned to Dakar, where he joined the Fundamental Institute of Black Africa and, with his incendiary speeches against colonialism, challenged the power embodied by Léopold Sédar Senghor, president of Senegal.
This work explores the unknown participation of Congolese intellectuals in the Situationist International movement, especially the student M'Belolo who wrote a protest song in May 1968.
Ultramarine is a visual poem, narrating the 'exile blues' through spoken word performance, improvised rhythms and textile display. It is a poetic essay in repoliticising one of the most universal colours, which also has colonial references. Objects and documents are rendered in words by the Afro-American poet Kain, voiced in music improvised by drummer Lander Gyselinck and animated in images by Vincent Meessen. Ultramarine is composed like a spectrum: it unfolds and intertwines fragments of meaning.
