On the opening day of this year’s Dak’Art Biennial of Contemporary African Art, visitors to the Ancien Palais de Justice could hear chanting emanating from Yrneh Gabon Brown’s A Salted Intermission, 2020–22, long before entering the gallery that housed the work. The Jamaican American artist stood at the door, addressing his guests in Wolof—Horom, Horom, Horom! Ndox Lac Rose!—while requesting visitors “pay” a symbolic offering by scooping sea salt from one bucket into another. Inside, a painted canoe rested on a mound of bone-white seashells, alluding to the port city’s centrality not just to