About Janine
Janine Gaëlle Dieudji, a ‘multi-local’ French-Cameroonian curator, currently lives between Florence and Marrakech.
A great traveler and an ardent art lover, she graduated in Culture and International Relations from the University of Lyon and got a Master’s Degree in Political Science from the University of Paris 2 Panthéon Assas.
She first visited Italy during her studies when she fell in love with Florence where she decided to move to for several years. Florence has and will always have a special place in Janine’s heart, a sort of home from home.
The Florentine experience
It was in Florence (https://www.we-wealth.com/news/secret-place/secret-place/secret-places-firenze) that she began her career as a curator in the world of culture and contemporary art. She has had many collaborations in the Florentine area, chiefly, those with artist Clet Abraham, French film festival “France Odeon”, Murate Art District and, last but not least, with Justin Thompson, with whom she organised Black History Month Florence as co-director and vice-president (more than 50 events in one month).
Black History Month Florence is connected to the Recovery Plan project, which began as a cultural research center. The aim of it is to promote transnational exchange between Afro-descendant cultures and people from the rest of the world.
It was conceived as a cultural archive, research center and exhibition space for art, performance, conferences and education. The aim is to convey content through events, seminars, workshops and artist residencies designed to make people reflect on Italy as a historical site of cultural exchange, but also to connect Afro-descendent communities residing in Italy with a wide network of cultural institutions.
BHMF and Uffizi Florence
2020 marked the beginning of the collaboration between Black History Month Florence and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (https://www.we-wealth.com/enterprise/cbm-partners/news/il-tondo-doni-e gli-nft-se-gli-uffizi-diventano-digitali), which included the On Being Present project: two editions on the museum’s virtual platform, with the first one revolving around the African presence in the artworks exhibited at the Statues and Paintings Gallery and the Palatine Gallery. In 2022, the first solo exhibition of Sammy Baloji’s works took place – at Andito degli Angiolini, Pitti Palace.
A career in contemporary art
For Janine, “collaborating” means exchanging and sharing with the “community”, in other words, she believes in the “together we do better and go further” motto, which is at the core of the multifaceted nature that led her to be actively involved in several projects, such as Griotmag.com – with Johanne Affricot
– the first Italian webzine celebrating the aesthetic, creative and cultural diversity of Italian Africans and the African diaspora.
The Expats webseries, a documentary web series exploring the lives of African Italian creatives, were part of this project.
Janine artistic background also includes exhibitions and projects carried out in collaboration with institutions, such as the American Academy in Rome, Villa Romana, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Le Murate Art District, but also as co-director and vice-president of the BHMF (Black History Month Florence) association, as well as co-founder of The Recovery Plan cultural centre (Florence).
She also held the four-year tenure as director of exhibitions at the Al Maaden Museum of Contemporary African Art (MACAAL) in Marrakech, a major facility within the Al Maaden complex, which is a contemporary art centre conceived by entrepreneur Mohamed Alami Lazraq and created by the Alliances foundation to promote the talent of contemporary African artists. The museum is active throughout the year, with many activities and exhibitions concerning contemporary African art.
A lover of change and renewal, Janine is always looking for new stimuli. The key to her success is humility, originality and hard work.
Below is an interview with Janine Gaëlle Dieudji.
When did your passion for art start?
I have always loved “creating”, even when I was a child. I would put together everything I could find and make sculptures. Growing up in Paris certainly helped me indulge this predilection; I also enjoyed spending entire days visiting art museums alone. My subsequent move to Florence, a city I like to call ‘an open-air museum’, whetted my appetite for creativity and contributed to forming my style, even though I did not initially think this would turn it into a professional project. Art has always been one of the greatest loves of my life.
What do you think could make a difference in the current contemporary art world?
In my opinion, the art world needs to “slow down”. This market has been demanding more and more “speed” for too many years, but it also needs time.
Art is an experience that requires time, time to create, think, produce, imagine and absorb emotions. We live in an era where everything has to be as quick and fast as possible, but this kind of approach cannot be applied to the art world.
What was living in Florence like?
I may have physically left Florence, but I certainly never left it from an emotional point of view, as it is always in my heart. Moreover, in 2016 I launched the Black History Month Florence project, an annual month-long event with several art-related events and Recovery Plan, a cultural research center. Thanks to these projects, my Florentine experience is still very much continuing.
Florence has been a very important city for me, it has allowed me to experiment a lot and grow both personally and professionally.
I consider it the city where I discovered my true self and understood my direction, even though I have not yet reached the destination.
Florence has given me so much, making me the person I am today, so it will always have a very important and special place in my heart and life.
What’s your advice to young emerging artists?
I would tell them to never stop experimenting and to focus on their works and not on how the market sees them. Above all, they need to be more self-critical, taking time to challenge themselves and finding their own “voice”, in other words, the language that best represents their true self.
What do you think of collectors?
I worked a lot with collectors when I was at Macaal, Museum of Contemporary African Art in Marrakech, where I was the director of exhibitions for four years. As artistic director, I worked for a family of collectors, so I was able to acquire plenty of knowledge of this segment.
I got to know the world of collecting from the inside and what I can say is that the figure of the collector is very important in the field of contemporary art; their contribution must not be underestimated. What I recommend to those who want to approach the world of art or start collecting, is to take the plunge! You can start collecting even as little as 100 euros! Passion is all that matters, art collection should not be designed to be an investment.
When did the collaboration with the Uffizi start?
Our collaboration with the Uffizi Gallery started in 2020 with On Being Present (curated by BHMF, Black History Month Florence), a live project on the official virtual platform of Uffizi. In 2021, we presented On Being Present Vol. II, and in 2022 we created the first physical exhibition with a monograph, together with Sammy Baloji’s solo exhibition at the Andito degli Angiolini in the Pitti Palace. This was the first time the Uffizi Gallery promoted an exhibition of considerable importance involving the archives and collections of the Uffizi, Museo Etnografico in Florence and Museo delle Civiltà (Rome) museums. This was a very innovative project involving different institutions that brought a foreign contemporary artist to exhibit in the gallery. This is a very important collaboration for us as the Uffizi is one of the best-known and most recognised museums in the world. Being able to work with an institution of this caliber helped us make our work known at the highest levels. This collaboration also allowed us to reinforce an institutional network that we had been building since 2016 with various institutions, such as the Sanderetto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, the Madre Museum, the American Academy in Rome and Le Murate in Florence.
