Namenala | I miss you

Namenala is a long-term photographic project about encounters, belonging, and the transformation of one's gaze.

"Namenala" is a Wolof expression meaning I miss you. The usual reply is Mala raw — I miss you more.

For a long time, I felt that something was missing in my life, although I could not name it. As a child, I searched for the "Other" through postcards from distant countries, my grandfather's dictionaries, books, films, and an old Black doll that fascinated me long before I understood why.

Africa was never part of my plans. I had imagined my future somewhere in Asia. Yet Africa unexpectedly entered my life in my hometown, when I began volunteering with newly arrived refugees from several African countries.

What started as an act of solidarity gradually became something else. While many people around me looked at them through prejudice, they welcomed me into their lives with extraordinary generosity. Through friendship, shared everyday experiences, and love, I slowly became aware that the project was not about understanding Africa, but about questioning the assumptions through which I had always looked at others—and at myself.

Namenala is therefore not a documentary project about migration. It is a visual diary of relationships, affection, doubts, contradictions, and personal transformation. It reflects on how encounters with others can unsettle inherited narratives and reveal that no gaze is ever neutral or innocent.

The work combines photographs, snapshots, personal texts, drawings, maps, found objects, vernacular photographs, and archival materials, embracing different visual languages to mirror the fragmented nature of memory and lived experience.

In 2022, a first edit of the project was published as a fanzine, edited by Nausicaa Giulia Bianchi and produced by The Soul and The Machine.

I am currently developing the work into a photobook.