Seynabou Sonko

Seynabou Sonko (1993, France) is an artist from the Senagalese diaspora, based in Paris. A graduate of UQAM in Montreal, ENSAV La Cambre in Brussels, and the University of Paris 8, her first steps in literature were marked by the publication of texts in magazines such as Sabir, Muscle, and Sève. In 2023 she published her first novel, Djinns, in Éditions Grasset, which won the Prix du Cheval Blanc and was shortlisted for the Porte Dorée prize. She also works as a musician, under the name Naboo. Her musical world, just like her writing, shows boundless creativity and an explicit desire to break down boundaries.

Her residency project uses the image of tombolos, those pieces of land that jut out into the sea, sometimes forming islands isolated from the mainland, to explore the dialectics of overflowing, whether in language, through the notion of creolization developed by the Martinican poet, novelist, and philosopher Édouard Glissant, or in the hybridism specific to Giallo, those Italian genre novels and films on the boundary between detective fiction, horror, and eroticism.

Portrait © Marie Mabondo