Esprit Noir is a diptych by Modou Dieng (b. 1970, Senegal), a Senegalese American artist who employs painting, photography, and collage to propose images rooted in intertextuality and intercultural exchange. His works express pictorially and materially how forces such as migration and global cultural correspondences can lead to the multilayered enrichment of contemporary culture.

In this composition, abstract shapes, lines, patterns and colors intermingle with figurative references to architecture, such as metal balconies, wooden storm shutters, and architectural facades.

Along with particular materials such as denim, burlap, cardboard, and wood frames that reference his Senegalese background, Dieng employs such compositional strategies and formal methods to reference a range of global aesthetic positions, from African art history, to Bauhaus philosophies, to contemporary Pop culture. The result is an expression of what Dieng Yacine calls “asymmetrical parallelism, a term coined by African poet and philosopher Léopold Sédar Senghor, defined as a diversified repetition of rhythm in time and space.”