As of Monday, May 23, Casa Árabe is hosting a photo exhibit curated and produced by Casa África, with images taken by Canary Islands artist Ángel Luis Aldai titled “Géntu Ndaw” (“Childhood Dreams” in the Wolof language). The exhibition was designed to be a celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the World Convention on Children’s Rights, a treaty which lays down the rights of children and the first international instrument acknowledging girls and boys as social role-players and the active holders of their own rights. The official opening event of the exhibition is taking place in the Casa Árabe exhibition hall on Monday, May 23 at 7:30 p.m. and includes attendance by the General Director of Casa África, Luis Padrón; the General Director of Casa Árabe, Pedro Villena, and the Dean of the Group of African Ambassadors in Spain, Victor Manuel Rita Da Foseca Lima.  

The Géntu Ndaw project transports us to Senegal, Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo, through photographs by Ángel Luis Aldai, in a visual chronicle about the lives of girls, boys and teenagers in these countries, creating a portrait of their urban and rural environments and their ways of living in society, playing, studying and relating with one another. It is linked to the work by the UN agency for children with the goal of disseminating, promoting and defending children’s rights. Its title comes from the Wolof language, spoken mainly in Senegal, Gambia and Mauritania. 

Ángel Luis Aldai (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1949) began working as a photographer in the early seventies. From then until now, he has traveled throughout every continent taking photographs for his publishing projects and exhibitions. His works have been shown at galleries, exhibition halls and museums in Madrid, Rome, New York, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Valencia, Cordoba and Huelva. They have also been displayed in countries like Niger, Mali, Ghana and Tanzania. A significant part of his work already appears in private collections and public entities. He has edited more than a dozen photography publications.

This exhibition forms part of the celebrations of Africa Day on May 25, which Casa África is celebrating in Madrid this week through a meeting of its Diplomatic Board on Tuesday, May 24, and with other parallel activities. Casa Árabe is also taking part in this activity, which forms part of the program of public diplomacy and culture initiatives put on by the Casas Network. In this case, the idea is to promote mutual knowledge and respect between Spain and Africa, with an ongoing commitment to culture as society’s driving force. Through this viewpoint, culture becomes the ideal tool for increasing sensitivity among the people, through art as a medium which unites us. Art helps us understand everything that gives us an identity and roots, while at the same time creating bonds with a changing world and helping us face the new challenges that contemporary societies produce.