Maloney
Fine Art is pleased to present Malick Sidibé: Studio Malick, Bamako, Mali, the
photographer’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, in collaboration with
Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Featuring vintage prints in original
hand-painted glass frames, the exhibition celebrates more than forty years of
Malick Sidibé’s photographs of the lives of young people in Mali since the
country’s independence from France in 1960. Portraying couples, marriage
ceremonies, social clubs, sport events, and infants, Sidibé uniquely conveys
the pride, exuberance, and beauty of his subjects. Now renowned, his work
provides an extraordinary record of momentous social and cultural change:
No African artist
has done more to enhance photography’s stature in the region, contribute
to its
history, enrich its image archive or increase our awareness of the textures and
transformations of African culture in the second half of the 20th century and
the beginning of
the 21st than Malick Sidibe.
-
Robert Storr, Dean, Yale School of Art
Sidibé
opened Studio Malick in 1962 as a center for his portrait and documentary work,
also serving early on as a popular gathering place for young people in Bamako.
His photographs capture the joy, convictions, and desires of a post-colonial
generation embracing such new freedoms as rock n’ roll and Western fashions.
Over the subsequent decades, Sidibé has continued to depict rituals of social
and personal identity. His work raises ever more vital questions about African
nationality, self-expression, gender, and historical memory.
Malick
Sidibé was born in 1936 in southern French Sudan (now Mali) to a rural herding
family. In 1952, his moved to Bamako to attend the prestigious National
Institute of Art, graduating in jewelry production. In 1955, he apprenticed at
the studio of a leading colonial French photographer, where he began to take
portraits of African customers. At night the young photographer biked around to
record local dance parties, growing popular for his pictures and his joie de
vivre. Opening his own studio in eastern Bamako in 1962, Sidibé has worked
there ever since.
Malick
Sidibé was the first African artist to be awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime
Achievement by the Venice Biennale, in 2007. He was the recipient of the
Hasselblad International Award in Photography, in 2003, as well as the
International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement, in
2008. Recent solo museum exhibitions include Malick Sidibé: Chemises,
The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, 2014; Studio Malick,
DePaul University Art Museum, Chicago, 2012; traveling to Cornell Fine Arts Museum,
Winter Park, Florida; Think with the Senses - Feel with the Mind, 52nd
International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennial, 2007; Malick Sidibé: Chemises,
Fotografiemuseum (FOAM), Amsterdam, 2008 and Malick Sidibé, The Cartier
Foundation, Paris, 2004.
Sidibé’s
work is included in numerous public collections including The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art, CA; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, CA; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Philadelphia
Museum of Art, PA; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; and International Center of
Photography, New York, NY.
