Ladji Diaby’s solo exhibition at Lafayette Anticipations, titled “Who’s Gonna Save the World?”, features furniture repurposed as vitrines for discarded objects. By collecting and displaying artifacts that have lost their original utility, Diaby creates a symbolic dialogue between himself and the anonymous former owners of these items, elevating mundane debris into the realm of high art.
The exhibition serves as a critical interrogation of the institutional and social systems that dictate cultural value. By placing objects of little material worth within a prestigious art space, Diaby challenges the viewer to reconsider how provenance, context, and the act of exhibition itself transform the perception of an object from trash to treasure.