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Première Ligne / First Line (Prison to Palace)
SESSION INFO
Monday, August 17, 2026
4:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Session Type: Workshop
On April 2, 2024, Senegal inaugurated a president released from prison ten days before the election — the culmination of years of protest, political imprisonment, and democratic resistance led by young people with everything to lose and no formal power. Première Ligne / First Line is the photographic exhibition that documented that struggle from the inside. Its creator, Abdou Karim Ndoye, was there for all of it. This session uses Ndoye’s work as a lens for a conversation American community supervision professionals rarely have: what does reentry look like when an entire society commits to it together? What does civic restoration mean at scale — and what does it demand of the people closest to those making the crossing? Facilitated through image-based dialogue, participants will connect an international democratic moment to the daily work of supervision, case management, and reintegration.
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SESSION PRESENTERS
Aisha Bullard
Attorney, Franklin Grove
Aisha J. Bullard, Esq. lived in Dakar, Senegal during the years Abdou Karim Ndoye was making the work in this exhibition — a firsthand witness to the democratic struggle it documents. She is the founder of The Arc Institute, a 501(c)(3) cultural and civic organization presenting the U.S. premiere of Première Ligne / First Line, and of Franklin Grove LLC, a justice reentry residential housing organization with over 20 years of continuous operation under contract with the Virginia Department of Corrections and the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. A practicing attorney, she brings to this session the dual perspective of someone who has watched reentry work up close — both in the lives of the individuals Franklin Grove serves and in the national story Ndoye spent three years documenting.
Abdou Karim Ndoye
Artist/photographer, Arc Institute
Abdou Karim Ndoye is a Senegalese photographer, filmmaker, and Conseiller Spécial à la Présidence of Senegal. Beginning in 2021, he documented his country’s democratic struggle from the inside — the protests, the imprisonments, the resistance — through what became the exhibition Première Ligne / First Line. His photograph of President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, taken days after Faye’s release from prison, is among the defining images of democratic resistance in contemporary Africa. Ndoye’s presence at this session — as both witness and now a senior advisor to the government that movement produced — makes the arc he documented not just historical but lived.
Abdoulaye Samate
Project Lead, Arc Institute
Abdoulaye Samate is a Richmond-based project coordinator with The Arc Institute. He will serve as interpreter and translator for Abdou Karim throughout the session.
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