text by GLENN O’BRIEN In the early nineties I visited Dakar, Senegal. I went to look at art and black Africa, where I’d never been. The occasion was a retrospective of the work of Mor Faye, an enormously gifted and imaginative artist who died at the age of 37 in 1984. He is a sort of African Van Gogh, an extraordinary innovator who couldn’t cope with the fevered workings of his brain. It was a strange trip. I landed in Dakar not knowing what to expect from Black Africa or from an Islamic country. It just so happened that my country had decided to invade an Islamic country, Iraq, days before I left. I didn’t know if I’d get the ugly American treatment, but I knew that it wasn’t my war, it was an oilman’s war. Once I got past the shock of the anarchic airport, and immigration officials…