Dakar is situated at the western edge of Africa. It has been the site for a Lebou settlement, a centre for slave trade, and during colonial time capital of the French Western Africa. Since Senegal’s independence in 1960 Dakar has been its capital. Léopold Sédar Senghor was the first president. (Cooper, 2009:45.) As one of the founders of the Négritude movement, he placed the arts at the centre of his attempt to create a modern nationalist identity based on traditional West African values. Twenty-five percent of the state budget was directed to the Ministry of Culture for art schools, publishing houses, theatres, museums and art exhibition. Similar ideas were implemented in other newly independent African countries (Harney, 2004:49). In 1966 the first World Festival for Black Art and Culture was organised in Dakar, and in 1992 Dakar’s first international biennial art exhibition took place. Since the middle of the 1990’s Dak’Art has focused almost uniquely on African contemporary art. (Bydler 2004:274.)I have visited the Dak’art exhibitions in 2008 and 2010 and will go there again in beginning of May 2012. The exhibited works of art have been similar to Western contemporary art in terms of technique and multimodality. But the meanings of the selected works of art are often politically sharp and questioning historical and contemporary relations on a global level. (Dak’Art 2008, Dak’Art 2010.) At NORDIK2012 I would like to discuss how political issues have been communicated through artworks shown at Dak’Art 2008, 2010 and 2012, with interpretations from a postcolonial perspective.