Interrogating the erasure of French colonial soldiers from History and reflecting on the experiences of the artists own grandfather, a Senegalese Tirailleur during the First World War, “Tata” literally and figuratively puts into focus the idea of the void.
It was first exhibited in 2026 as part of the exhibition and research project Tirailleurs: Trials and Tribulations at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.
Drawing on the layered meanings of the word "tata" in Wolof—a fortified enclosure, earthen wall, burial ground, or sacred piece of land—this work rethinks the monument not as a structure but a site where protection, community, and memory converge.
It addresses the story of the missing memorial to the Tirailleurs in Reims—erected in 1924 and dismantled by the Nazis in 1940— reproducing its pedestal but removing the figures and inscribing it with the original poem "A history of statue, gone".