as an itinerant event. The countries alternated in hosting each edition but each edition also travelled, giving thus a broader visibility to the artists. But this focus on the Bantu roots, leading to a selection exclusively centered on artists creating and living on what was defined by the organizers as the Bantu 'territory' as well as favoring painting and sculpture over new media, is probably one of the reasons why the event did not reach an international audience and remained a regional biennial. The Dakar Biennale (or DAK'ART) is undoubtedly the most famous of all African based biennials. It was founded in 1990, as the legacy of the Pan-African Festival mondial des arts nègres, which died out in the 1980s before being resuscitated in Dakar in 2010. Celebrating the heritage of Léopold Sedar Senghor's cultural politics, DAK'ART was initially conceived as a cultural event alternating every two years between poetry/literature and contemporary art. However, the 1990 edition would remain the only one devoted to literature. At its first occurrence in 1992, the art event had an international scope but it was refocused on the African continent from its next edition in 1994. One of the particularities of DAK'ART is its “off” event that spreads out from the official Biennale venues into various locations in the city. Even if the off was founded by the biennale's administration and not by an external association, it is considered by many as the core of the biennial, giving an extra-space of visibility to the dynamism and richness of African artistic creation, and particularly to promote the Senegalese artists who are not selected in the official exhibitions.8 Indeed, the selection process is an open call, which has been criticized by many artists who wish a more curated event, because in their view the open call is not democratic as it claims to be, but favors those who have access to relevant information and the means to set up an application file.9 Each edition is different from the previous one, each learning from the criticism that was made through evaluation seminars. For example, since 2006, an artistic director is appointed and collaborates with a group of curators to select the artists. Biennale de Bamako The Rencontres de la photographie africaine or Biennale de Bamako, also known as the Bamako Encounters, is also one of the oldest art biennials on the continent (founded in 1993). It is