Ladji Diaby presents Who’s Gonna Save the World? at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris from April 1 to July 19, 2026. The exhibition introduces an installation made from furniture collected on the street or sourced second-hand. Diaby reworks each piece, drawing from his mother’s way of decorating furniture at home. In her space, objects carried a link to spirituality and closeness to God. That reference shapes how each piece takes form in the exhibition.
ART
Diaby works with furniture as display structures for discarded objects. These objects carry little material value in everyday use. Within the exhibition, their status changes. Each work connects the artist with an unknown previous owner, creating a shared authorship that remains open and unresolved.
The installation questions how value forms and who defines it. Objects that once had no importance gain new meaning inside an art institution. Diaby places them in this setting to examine how Western systems assign cultural worth.
Within the installation, the works take on a talismanic role. Political, spiritual, and artistic ideas come together through the objects Diaby selects and reworks. He treats these materials as tools for self-liberation, allowing him to pursue a life beyond the destiny prescribed by Western social hierarchies for a Malian man of Muslim faith living in France.
The title Who’s Gonna Save the World? poses a rhetorical question. Diaby sees collapse as part of a larger process that allows reconstruction. He suggests that accepting this condition opens the possibility for new forms of collective life. The works point toward shared responsibility, where change depends on collective action.
The exhibition at Lafayette Anticipations is curated by Ben Broome.
Ladji Diaby was born in 2000 in Saint-Denis and lives in the Greater Paris region. He studied at Beaux-Arts de Paris. His practice combines found objects, image, and video, engaging political and social questions through installation. His recent solo exhibition No one has ever called their child hunger took place at Kunstverein Nürnberg from 2024 to 2025. His work has also appeared in group exhibitions including Felicità 2025 at Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2026, Partenaires Particuliers at Fondation CAB in 2025, and Autohistorias at Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2024. Earlier presentations include exhibitions in Paris, Geneva, Cologne, Lausanne, and Corsica. In 2024, he joined a collective residency at Villa Medici in Rome, invited by Les Chichas de la Pensée.
