NAMENALA | I MISS YOU
It is not cultural distance that separates us.
It is a story we tell ourselves.
This work began as an attempt to step outside that narrative.
I did not want bodies reduced to symbols.
I was looking for authenticity,
for shared time and shared spaces.
And I found them.
I was welcomed with unexpected generosity. Deep friendships emerged, intimate relationships took shape, and bonds were formed that left lasting traces.
But no gaze is innocent.
It was precisely within that space of closeness that something began to shift.
I started to see what had previously remained outside the frame: my projections, my desires, the images I carried with me long before the encounter.
The other was never simply the other.
The other was also the place where my expectations, my absences, and my contradictions took form.
This work begins there.
Not from what I saw,
but from what began to change as I looked.
“Namenala” is a Wolof expression meaning “I miss you”. In certain contexts, it can also evoke “I love you”, as longing and affection become inseparable.
Namenala is a long-term photographic and diaristic project developed between 2012 and 2022 through journeys, friendships, intimate relationships and shared experiences between Europe and Africa.
What began as an attempt to understand cultural difference, belonging and human connection gradually became a reflection on the act of looking itself.
Drawing on photographs, vernacular images, personal archives and texts, the project questions the narratives through which we construct the idea of the Other. Rather than documenting difference, it explores the desires, expectations and projections that shape our encounters with others.
Over time, the distance between observer and observed dissolved. Friendship replaced observation, participation replaced documentation, and the work became increasingly concerned with the transformations produced by those encounters.
Namenala is not a story about Africa. While rooted in encounters across Africa and Europe, Namenala ultimately explores the fragile boundary between self and other.
It is a story about the fragile boundary between self and other, and about what begins to change when that boundary is allowed to blur.
