Malick Sidibé: Studio Malick, Bamako, Mali

LOS ANGELES - Feb. 5, 2015 - PRLog -- 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 Sidibé.          -Robert Storr, Dean, Yale Art School

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.

*The exhibition Malick Sidibé: Studio Malick, Bamako, Mali is presented at Maloney Fine Art in memory of Claude Simard, 1956-2014. An artist and co-founder of Jack Shainman Gallery of New York, Simard was a great champion of Sidibé’s work.