A Seat at the Table: Feminist Carte Blanche in the Parliament of Ghosts

On November 20, MansA takes over “Parliament of Ghosts,” Ibrahim Mahama’s installation on view at the Fondation Cartier, for a new “Temps de la parole.” Mame-Fatou Niang brings together four voices for “Néoblaste,” a reading-performance exploring appearance, invisibility, and the possibility of finding one’s place.

On Friday, November 20, 2026, MansA presents *Le Temps de la parole avec MansA* as part of *Parliament of Ghosts*, an installation by Ibrahim Mahama featured in the exhibition *Le Temps des récoltes* at the Fondation Cartier. Conceived as a space for exchange and a public forum, the installation hosts a gathering focused on voices that are rarely heard and presences that have been rendered invisible.

This event is part of N.A.R.D.A.L. (New Approach to Research on Afro-Descendant Dynamics in Connection), a program led by MansA that highlights the voices, thoughts, and life stories of African and Afro-descendant women. It also echoes the legacy of the Nardal sisters and their salon in Clamart, a space for encounters and the exchange of ideas between the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and the United States.

For this event, researcher and visual artist Mame-Fatou Niang brings together Assadiallo Doucouré, historian Olivette Otélé, writer Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, and visual artist Zana Masombuka for *Néoblaste*, a reading-performance about emergence. Neoblasts are regenerative cells. The project, spanning a decade, collects the voices of women from Dakar to Berlin, including Clichy-Montfermeil and Rio de Janeiro.

The performance opens with a shipwreck narrated from the depths by a drowned woman. Neither quite dead nor yet alive, she calls on the audience to bear witness and questions the point of returning to a world where she remains invisible. The voices of Olivette Otélé and Zana Masombuka support her ascent, like an invitation to choose to appear and assert her presence. Born in Clichy-Montfermeil, Assadiallo Doucouré brings this chorus to a close by giving voice to a generation that no longer merely asks to be seen, but is taking its rightful place.

In *Parliament of Ghosts*, this encounter creates a dialogue between the living, the invisible, and those whose voices are trying to reach us. It poses a question: What becomes of a place when those we do not expect decide to take their place there?

Olivette Otélé is a historian specializing in the legacies and memory of slavery. A research professor emerita at SOAS in London, she is the author of *African Europeans: An Untold History* (2020), among other works. She also held a visiting professorship at the Collège de France in 2023.

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr is a Senegalese novelist born in Dakar in 1990. He won the Prix Goncourt in 2021 for *La Plus Secrète Mémoire des hommes*. His work explores, in particular, buried stories and absent figures whose voices continue to haunt the living.

Mame-Fatou Niang is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where she founded and directs the Center for European and Atlantic Black Studies. As a researcher and visual artist, her work focuses on Black geographies, Blackness in France, and the institutionalization of Black studies in Europe. She is the author of *Identités Françaises* and co-author of *Universalisme*.

Zana Masombuka, known by her artist name “Ndebele Superhero,” is a South African visual artist. Through photography, film, sculpture, and performance, she explores modernity and our relationship with spirits, drawing on her Ndebele cultural heritage.

Assadiallo Doucouré is a sociologist by training and grew up in Clichy-sous-Bois. She participated in the Échoïques art project, directed by Mame-Fatou Niang, which explored the role of sounds, noises, and silences in the construction of memory. She is co-president of the feminist and anti-racist organization Lallab.