I'll have a project. How international grants and cultural cooperation have shaped contemporary African art into a project made of objectives, activities and expected results

Why promote contemporary African art as "contemporary African art"? Doing so means to have a project. In other words, such discourse – with its inherent aims, objectives, activities, calendar, budget and target – is developed within a project template, and the constant elements which characterize contemporary African art deeply relate to the essence of projects. The expression "contemporary African art" addresses an international network, and the reference to Africa responds to the eligibility of the continent in the strategies of development and of intercultural and multicultural dialogue. The focus on promoting contemporary African art, rather than producing it, negotiates more easily with international partners. The Dakar Biennale is a relevant case study. Since 1996 the Dakar Biennale has been a unique biennial specifically focussed on contemporary African art, termed La Biennale de l'art africain contemporain de Dakar; it is a recurrent exhibition with a limited budget supported by national and international grant-markers and sponsors. This article argues that the Dakar Biennale is the result of the project drafted in 1993 which explicitly states the aims, objectives, activities, calendar, budget and expected results of the event. The project is the tool used to structure the biennale with its focus on contemporary African art, and it is the tool which will influence also in the future all the discourse around the biennale. My point is not that contemporary African art is constructed to respond to grant-makers, but that the discourse around contemporary African art – and of many productions of contemporary art outside of the so-called centres of the art system – is strongly informed by the project