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Binta Diaw is an Italian-Senegalese artist, who was a candidate for the Premio MAXXI 2024. The research themes include the black body, migration, and the process of liberation.

Il peut pleurer du ciel was the first work that Associazione Genesi commissioned from an artist, and it was presented for the first time in Turin, on the occasion of the eponymous solo show at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in 2024.

A video conceived as a visual meditation of the ocean is projected onto the wall at the rear of the room. The video camera focuses on the water of the sea and on the waves that are formed offshore. In the distance we can see Lampedusa, a land of imagination and hostility at the crossroads of two worlds that struggle to understand one another. Dark masses appear in the water, rectangular shapes that are aligned and fluctuate against the wind and the tides. These shapes are mats of soil through which the artist evokes the semantic richness of the words “this is my land.” She is referring to the land that we choose for ourselves, or the one that is imposed upon us, with particular reference to the history of Africa along with its colonial history. On the ground two large plastic sheets refer to the carpet in the video (and at the same time to the pollution of the waters) and host numerous small identical sculptures made of soil. The latter are meant to recall the Western mindset of considering the migrants arriving on the European coastline as being identical, mere numbers.

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