Artist Omar Victor Diop’s work ‘recasts history and the global politics of black resistance’
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2018/08/03/artist-omar-victor-diops-work-recasts-history-and-the-global-politic
Omar Victor Diop, The #Sonacotra Tenant Strike 1974-80. From Liberty (2016). (Omar Victor Diop/MAGNIN-A, Paris)
From 1974 to 1980, a prolonged strike pitted the tenants of Sonacotra, a French state-owned agency responsible for providing public housing to migrant workers from north and sub-Saharan Africa, against its management, many of whom were former colonial officers. Those striking opposed perpetual rent increases and demanded better living conditions in worker dormitories controlled by the Sonacotra authorities, paving the way for the first collective protest of black African immigrants in postcolonial France. A struggle for tenants’ and workers’ rights, the Sonacotra Tenant Strike is regarded as a pivotal moment of black solidarity in the history of collective political activism by African diasporas in Europe.