Art ‘is not an immediate solution – otherwise it would become an ideology’, Diawara told an audience in Porto this year, who had gathered to watch A Letter from Yene (2022), one of his three documentary essay-films, alongside AI: African Intelligence (2022) and Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom (2023). Nonetheless, treading a path between art, philosophy and journalism, A Letter from Yene (which premiered at London’s Serpentine Galleries last year) concentrates, from an African perspective, on the ecological degradation of a Senegalese fishing village. AI: African Intelligence, which investigates the intersection between African rituals of possession in Senegal and emerging AI, was unveiled at the Berlinale this year. Having long made work that follows, and follows through on, the work of thinkers like Édouard Glissant, Wole Soyinka and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Diawara is reaching a wider audience, with In Search of Africa, his 1996 book delineating the border between African and African-American culture, newly translated into Portuguese. Diawara also released his portrait of Davis at Sharjah Biennial 15.