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Pap Souleye Fall

Pap Souleye Fall - Artists - Garth Greenan Gallery

Photo by Lilah Benetti

Pap Souleye Fall is a Senegalese American artist and a recent graduate of the Yale School of Art. Their multidisciplinary output spans the realms of video, performance, comic book art, and cosplay.

Fall is deeply influenced by the community, world-building, and self-fashioning associated with internet subcultures and online fandoms—specifically the Black Otaku community. They conceive of their art, in turn, as akin to fan art—as DIY “merch” or “cosplay” for the imaginary narratives that undergird their oeuvre. In this sense, Fall’s work is less a traditional art practice than an ever-expanding cosmology of images and objects that shifts and flows in evolving constellations of meaning. For Fall, the modalities of speculative fiction, gameplay, and comics are potent creative engines, providing strategies by which members of the African diaspora might navigate and transcend systems of global oppression.

Born in 1994 in the U.S. but growing up in Senegal, Fall spent their upbringing immersed in manga and video games. In 2022, Fall published the first volume of Oblivion Rouge, a dystopian graphic novel that follows a pair of female protagonists as they battle a threat to a futuristic Africa. With a graphic style modeled after Japanese manga but featuring an all-African cast, the narrative foregrounds themes of decolonization, neocolonialism, and pandemic-era violence, borrowing the psychological richness and character development of manga to communicate a specifically African story. With its first volume released as Fall was beginning their graduate studies, Oblivion Rouge was also a creative watershed, allowing Fall to understand the craft of worldbuilding—that is, the process of refining and developing a fictional sci-fi space—as a model for their nascent art practice.

This ethos of worldbuilding has been key to DEAD PIXEL, a growing cluster of ideas and images that form the conceptual spine of Fall’s recent and ongoing work. Broken LED screens, a Swedish-manufactured matchbox for sale in Senegal, chroma key green: From the associative links between these items, Fall has engendered a multifarious universe encompassing brightly colored reliefs and tapestries; quasi-architectural environments full of wooden books; and chroma key green bodysuits festooned with pearls, cowrie shells, and peanut shells. With these works—and via the repeated invocation of the so-called green-screen—Fall explores dynamics of visibility and invisibility, opacity and fugitivity as they merge with the physical and virtual spaces of the present. 

Fall’s work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions, most recently at Stellarhighway (2025, New York), Blade Study (2025, New York), Marginal Utility (2024, Philadelphia), Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery (2024, Philadelphia), Gratin (2023, New York), and Galerie Éthiopiques (2018, Senegal). They have also appeared in group exhibitions at Mixed Media Space (2025, North Adams, Massachusetts), Institute of Contemporary Art (2025, Portland, Maine), Below Grand (2025, New York), Canada (2025, New York), and Hesse Flatow (2025, Amagansett, New York), among many other galleries and institutions.

Pap Souleye Fall

1994
Born in Washington D.C.
Raised in Dakar, Senegal

Lives and works in Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York

 

EDUCATION

2020–2022
Yale School of Art, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 

2013–2017
The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

 

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2025
HIDDENINPLAINSIGHT, Stellarhighway, Brooklyn, New York, January 25–March 15, 2025
INANUTSHELL, Blade Study, New York, New York, January 9–February 8, 2025

2024
BLUR NEGATIVE SPACES OR and D, Marginal Utility, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 1–December 29, 2024 
SEEINGDOUBLE: Pap Souleye Fall, Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 2–March 6, 2024

2023
ITAINTTHATDEEP, Gratin, New York, New York, September 21–October 28, 2023
Greenscreen Vortex as Digestive Engine for Digital Matter and Matter, Icebox Project Space, Marginal Utility, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 13–August 20, 2023

2018
Doomu Dëkk, Galerie Éthiopiques, Saint-Louis, Senegal, April 25–May 14, 2018
TAKE ME, Storage Unit, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2018 

 

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2025–2026
IM/MOBILE, Selebe Yoon, Dakar, Senegal, November 29, 2025–February 28, 2026

2025
Too Bright to Feel, Mixed Media Space, North Adams, Massachusetts, October 25–November 22, 2025
otherwise, Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, Maine, October 3–December 13, 2025
Spaces & Places, Friedrichs Pontone, New York, New York, September 5–September 28, 2025
Barnett's Candelabra, Below Grand, New York, New York, August 23–September 27, 2025
Veronica, Veronica, Hesse Flatow, Amagansett, New York, June 14–July 26, 2025
Contact Sport, Canada, New York, New York, May 29 – July 11, 2025
Industrial Dry, Jack Barrett Gallery, New York, New York, May 16–June 28, 2025
Block Universe, Turley Gallery, Hudson, New York, March 29–May 11, 2025
GIS GIS, gardeHouse, Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, 2025

2024
Mad Black Phantasms, Picture Theory, New York, New York, November 21–December 7, 2024
Encounters, Blaise Senghor Cultural Center, Dakar, Senegal, May 16–June 16, 2024
House Warming, Bloko 748, Venice, Italy, 2024

2023
</cascading error//errant catalyst/>, The Arts League, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 16–October 21, 2023
APRiL (Artists Prospering Really is Limitless), Omola Studio, New Haven, Connecticut, April 15–26, 2023
In the Weeds: Camouflage and Its Discontent, Houseguest Gallery, Louisville, Kentucky, November 11, 2022–January 8, 2023

2022
Next Day Soup, Yale School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut, March 28–April 5, 2022
Brought it Home: A Continuum, Afro-American Cultural Center, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, March 17–April 21, 2022

2020
March Zine, RAW Materials Company, Great Masquerade, Dakar, Senegal, 2020

2018–2019
The View from Here, Waru Studio, Dak'Art Biennale OFF, Dakar, Senegal, May 1–May 25, 2018; the Wright Museum of Art, Beloit College, Beloit, Wisconsin, September 6–November 11, 2018; the Center for Visual Arts Gallery, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, January 17–February 22, 2019; Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, July 18–September 28, 2019

2017
VOX XIII: Are ‘Friends’ Electric?, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 14–August 20, 2017
5 into 1, The Galleries at Moore College of Art & Design, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 25–June 24, 2017
Teacher don’t teach me nonsense, Arronson Gallery, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2017

 

BOOKS AND CATALOGUES

Fall, Pap Souleye, Saturday AM. Oblivion Rouge, Volume 1: The HAKKINEN. Beverly: Rockport Publishers, 2022.

Underwood, Joseph. The View from Here: Contemporary Perspectives from Senegal. Kent: Kent State School of Art Collection and Galleries, 2018.

 

PERIODICALS

African Digital Art. “Interview with Senegalese Comic Artist Pap Souleye Fall.” African Digital Art, April 16, 2021.

Chiu, Yihsuan. “'Barnett's Candelabra' at Below Grand.” White Hot Magazine, September 9, 2025. 

Cryer, Logan. “Art for Change: The Comic.” The Philadelphia Citizen, March 27, 2024.

Curnow, Kathy. “The View From Here: Contemporary Perspectives from Senegal Curated by Joseph L. Underwood.” African Arts Vol. 54 No. 3, Autumn 2021.

DakArtNews. “Navigating Dual Identities: The Transmedia Creative Worlds of Pap Souleye Fall.” DakArtNews, June 23, 2024.

Fall, Pap Souleye. “Dead Pixel.” The Art Blog, June 7, 2023.

Greenberger, Alex. “Despite a Wave of Closure in New York, Small Galleries Here Are Flourishing.” ARTnews, February 4, 2025.

Hernández Rosa, Kevin. “Pap Souleye Fall, ‘It Ain’t That Deep, 2023.’” Reviewsfornone, October 4, 2023.

Larkin, Daniel. “Is Touching Sculpture Sexier After Zoom Fatigue?” Hyperallergic, April 13, 2022.

Sarkar, Aparna. “Pap Souleye Fall: The Infinite Churn.” The Electric Pencil, February 19, 2025.

Slattery, Brian. “Artists Get Personal In Newhallville Show.” New Haven Independent, April 24, 2023.

Wu, Jenny, et al. “The 10 Exhibitions to See in February 2025.” ArtReview, February 3, 2025.

 

SELECTED PERFORMANCES

2025
DATADATAPASSIVEDATADATADEADLIVEDATA, October 3, 2025, for otherwise, Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, Maine

2024
INVISIBLE TO WHOM, March 20, 2024, for Black Aesthetics, Judson Memorial Church, New York, New York

2023
NEGA DEAD PIXEL 1, September 30, 2023, for </cascading error//errant catalyst/>, The Arts League, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
NEGA DEAD PIXEL 2, September 14, 2023, for Jay Simple: Where The Young Bols Rumble, Institute for the Contemporary Image (TILT), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
CON 1, April 2023, for APRiL (Artists Prospering Really is Limitless), Omola Studio, New Haven, Connecticut

2022
GLITCHIT, April 8, 2022, for Infested Keyboard – Vessel for 10 Suns, Tsai City, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

2018
ZZZZZZ, 2018, for Fréquence Pinton, Dak'Art Biennale, Dakar, Senegal

2017
MISSDICK VIBROCIS, Vitche Boul-Ra, Stroker, Yureka Cash, April 18, 2017, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Suffering n’ Smiling, 2017, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Untitled, 2017, for First World, Terra Hall, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
SALTY, 2017, for Brutal Beasts, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
ODE TO FALL, 2017, for TAKE ME, Storage Unit, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania