Thread Residency

Thread is a cultural center and artist's residency program in Sinthian, a remote village in eastern Senegal near the Gambia River and the border with Mali. In close collaboration with Le Korsa, it enables artists from around the world to advance their work in an exceptional setting, and serves as platform for people from throughout the Tambacounda region to share their own stories with a wide audience that extends internationally.

Le Korsa was established by Nicholas Fox Weber, the Director of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in 2005 to encompass the philanthropic initiatives of the Foundation in rural Senegal, West Africa. The goal of Le Korsa is to offer support to rural Senegalese communities across the fields of culture, education and health. You can read more about Le Korsa on their website.

Thread's imaginative building by Toshiko Mori has a remarkable impact. Besides being an uplifting space in which artists work on their own projects, it serves the local people as a base for agricultural programs, language and health classes, markets, parties, music performances, and sports. At the same time, it helps the local population in practical ways; the roof collects and retains rainwater, creating a viable source for 40% of the village's domestic water needs, and it even provides electrical outlets where villagers charge their cellphones and a small library that attracts lots of visitors. Thread was designed to be a flexible and evolving public space, and the local population uses it in a variety of ways: it has become home to music and dance festivals, soccer tournaments, daily study halls, and village meetings.

Thread is best suited for artists that are able to work independently in their studio. We do not expect collaborations with local artisans, rather, we are interested in the convergence of everyday rural endeavors with the visiting artists’s visual arts practices. 

Thread’s socio-cultural role is most pronounced in its function as an agricultural hub for Sinthian and the surrounding villages. Its staff provides the community with sustained agricultural and organizational training, while the physical site offers several gardens that locals cultivate for sustenance and as an income source. In addition to being served by a bore well, the building’s roof collects and retains rainwater, creating an ongoing water supply for these agricultural projects, which is crucial during the eight-month dry season.

Thread posits that art, culture, and architecture should be supported in tandem with agriculture, education, and health, and that all of these sectors support one another.