Whether working through photography, video, installation, textile-based imagery or film, Naëtt Mbaye's practice is fundamentally a practice of storytelling. Each medium becomes a different way of telling stories, questioning representation, and creating new images in which African and Afro-descendant women can recognize themselves.
Drawing upon her family history, her French-Senegalese-Ivorian heritage, and the stories passed down within the communities from which she comes, the artist explores representations of African and Afro-descendant women both in history and within contemporary imaginaries. Her work seeks to make visible figures, narratives and lived experiences that have long remained absent from or marginalized within dominant representations.
For several years, Mbaye has pursued an ongoing body of research centred on the figure of the Drianké, an emblematic character within Senegalese society associated with elegance, social influence and self-affirmation. Through family archives, contemporary photography, video and textile installations, she examines the visual codes that shape this figure while questioning how Black women represent themselves and how they are represented.
Her works establish an ongoing dialogue between past and present, intimate memory and collective history. Images become spaces of reclamation where questions of visibility, transmission and identity are continually re-examined. For Naëtt Mbaye, the aim is not simply to preserve memories or document cultural heritage, but to create new representations capable of nourishing the narratives of present and future generations.