Bio

“...YOU ARE EXACTLY AS TALL AS YOU MEASURE YOURSELF.”

 -Alun Be

Alun Be is an artist who strives to portray African modernity. Born Alioune Ba in 1981 in Dakar, Senegal, Be credits the development of his oeuvre largely to his French, American, and West African upbringing. Be’s parents did not believe art was a stable career, pushing him to pursue an M.A. in Architecture. After two years as an architect in Senegal, a move to Denmark sparked his love for photography. Since then, Be has exhibited at the Milan Universal Exposition(2015), the Dakar Biennale (2018), the Museum of Contemporary Photography of Chicago (2018), and others, and spoken at TEDxNapoli and TEDxWanChai Salon. His photography series deal largely with intergenerationality, female empowerment, and technology

My Work

 Africa is not striving to be modern anymore, that has already happened. It is modernity that is striving to be African. I am part of a new generation of autodidact artist from West Africa, with at the core a desire to offer the world a new window to the creativity of the African continent in our own form. The core of my work uses the nuances of our cultures in order to have a profound impact on the viewer’s self-perceptions. I use contrast as a common denominator of our ways of living and as a mean to question and challenge stereotypes and rules, which govern our societal behaviors. My mediums of expression give me the ability to capture the world in a hyper realistic manner, and yet it is nimble enough to blend and transform the consciousness of what is believed to be. I find myself continually exploring those aspects that are often hidden or misrepresented,  as a way to evoke the unseen. My art reveals the angles from which we do not see the world