Art critic and curator Franck Hermann Ekra collaborates with numerous artists from Senegal, Ivory Coast and Benin, who possess the power to evoke both sacred and secular visual writings. Beyond the different "schools of signs," he illustrates how artists work towards the survival and nomadism of signs–sometimes ancient or endangered. He raises awareness of a trans-African visual history of writing that encompasses deciphering, translating, and transcribing.

M’barek Bouhchichi cultivates an interdisciplinary artistic practice, experimenting with an open repertory of forms and materials that he uses to question and combine; migrating signs and symbols as well as skill. He embraces conceptual materialism in his process, exploring strategies for the rehabilitation and circulation of Afro-Amazigh culture both tangible and intangible, often paying tribute to the dignity of marginalised communities that have been victims of racism and expropriation. Groups like Saharan peoples (Tuaregs, Peuls, and others), under the yoke of neo-colonial economic policies and the capture of natural resources. The installation of 7 staffs, entitled Imdyazen (Poets), refers to the ensemble of itinerant poets and actors based in rural areas who speak Tamazight, one of the three Berber languages spoken in Morocco. The staffs–standing vertically, leaning against a wall–are sculptural yet performative objects, made of wood covered in sheets of copper. Carved onto the metal’s surface are fragments of poems by M’barek Ben Zida (1925-1973), oral compositions in which M’barek Bouhchichi recognizes himself. A tribute from a visual artist to a poet who has come to engrave the signs of an Amazigh culture long oppressed–to the point of banning the alphabet–by a dominant Arab culture. The sticks that stand before us are witness-objects waiting for the last storytellers ready to chant these etched words out loud in the public square.