Visual arts, insecurity and an elusive peace in Casamance, Senegal

The separatist rebellion in Casamance, southern Senegal, has driven what is arguably the longest-running intra-state conflict in West Africa. Spanning over four decades, it has affected successive generations through insecurity (including armed violence and landmine use); economic disruption; trauma; human displacement (both internal and into neighbouring Guinea-Bissau and The Gambia); loss of homes, schools and infrastructure; and through return and reconstruction processes. The paper briefly describes these impacts, particularly in the complex, dynamic security environment along Casamance's southern border with Guinea-Bissau. It then offers three contrasting vignettes on how visual arts have been used by different actors for various ends amid an unresolved conflict, and how local people engage with these media. First, it explores how landmine awareness boards aimed at children are locally perceived. Second, it examines cultural messaging through art at a political office of the rebel movement. And third, it considers a piece of public art as an example of deploying culture for peace. The paper concludes that in promoting security and in the elusive search for a definitive peace in Casamance, the role of visual arts has been mixed. Well-intended international aid for such projects has sometimes failed to take full account of domestic political manipulation and tensions, or of socio-economic realities on the ground. Some local cultural initiatives, meanwhile, are ambivalent in their messaging within the fraught spaces of the conflict.