Toubab im Senegal



Graphic Novel, personal project
2021

Photography © Michael Goldgruber

Spending three months at the Artist Residence “Waaw” in St. Louis du Sénégal in 2016 ignited my working and focussing on this graphic novel. “Toubab”, as a white person is referred to in Western Africa, serves as the alter ego, who can’t quite handle the strong visibility his skin color brings about and the invasiveness of his unfamiliar surrounding. "Toubab" aims at a different, a contemporary, so to speak post-colonial, narrative of “the white man in Africa”, one that is humble and self-ironic, as it points out the feelings many travelers might experience when leaving the so-called Western world: a feeling of uneasiness, of being lost and somewhat out of place, not connected yet very privileged, to the point where Toubab “allows himself (…) to take a pie in the face”, as comic theorist Frank Santoro put it. 

You can purchase “Toubab im Senegal” via my webshop, Luftschachtverlag (German) or Presque Lune (French).








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