As part of the OFF programme of the 16th Dakar Biennale and the 15th edition of Partcours.

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What emerges after a rupture? What remains when familiar reference points shift, when stories transform, when we are called upon to rebuild or redefine our place in the world?

With What Grows After, HOOP Galerie brings together four contemporary African women artists — Kiné Aw, Victoria Oniosun, Klervie Mouho and Abdulazeez Ganiyat — around a shared exploration of transformation, memory and the many forms of regeneration.

Through their distinct artistic practices, the exhibition examines what emerges in the aftermath of upheaval, loss and moments of profound questioning. Rather than focusing on the wounds themselves, it turns its attention to what they make possible: new identities, renewed connections, and different ways of understanding ourselves and the world around us.

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In Kiné Aw's work, transformation takes root in cultural and spiritual heritage. Drawing on ancestral African traditions and symbolism, the artist explores the evolving place of women in contemporary society and their capacity to reclaim their histories in order to shape new forms of identity and freedom. Roots are not presented as something fixed or restrictive, but as a living source of strength from which change can emerge.

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Victoria Oniosun explores the inner landscapes of female identity. Through her figures and sensitive compositions, she gives form to emotions, intimate experiences, questions of belonging and the relationships that shape our understanding of ourselves and others. Her work reveals the richness of these inner worlds, where vulnerability can become a space for self-discovery and self-affirmation.

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In Klervie Mouho's practice, memory becomes a living material, composed of fragments, personal narratives and collective histories. By revisiting archives, family memories and traces of the past, she questions how stories are constructed, transmitted and reinvented. Her works create a space in which memories can be reassembled and narratives reclaimed, allowing new interpretations of the past to emerge.

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Abdulazeez Ganiyat approaches transformation through the notions of care, healing and resilience. Her work explores the connections between women, nature, memory and transmission. Through botanical references and compositions imbued with softness, she evokes the regenerative capacity of living things and considers healing as a process that is at once intimate, emotional and universal.

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Together, these four artistic practices offer a multifaceted reflection on what enables us to move forward, transform ourselves and bring something new into being from what we have experienced. Heritage becomes a resource, the inner self a territory to explore, memory a story to reconstruct, and care a possibility for renewal.

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Presented as part of the OFF programme of the 16th Dakar Biennale, whose overarching theme explores (Anti)Fragility: Arts of Repair and Strategies of the Counterstroke, the exhibition enters into dialogue with this edition's reflections on the ability to transform fragility into creative strength and to imagine new ways of inhabiting the world.

What Grows After is not about simply returning to a state of balance, nor about erasing what came before. It invites us to look towards what comes next, to recognise the strength of what endures and to welcome what has yet to emerge.

For what grows after is not necessarily what existed before. Sometimes, it takes an entirely new form — a different way of being, connecting and growing.

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What grows after is not a return. It is a becoming.