Trieste, major contemporary African portrait painters at the Magazzino delle Idee

From February 18 to June 11, 2023, the Magazzino delle Idee in Trieste presents the exhibition African Portraits. Seydou Keïta, Malick Sidibé, Samuel Fosso, curated by Filippo Maggia. Now celebrated worldwide among the leading figures in photography of the last half-century, the three artists have only been discovered in the West in recent years, and their personal stories have helped make their works even more fascinating.

The exhibition, produced and organized by ERPAC - Ente Regionale per il Patrimonio Culturale del Friuli Venezia Giulia, presents for the first time in Italy an important selection of more than one hundred works by the three photographers, made available by C.A.A.C. The Contemporary African Art Collection in Geneva, the Jean Marc Patras Gallery in Paris, the Fondazione Modena Arti Visive and numerous private lenders.

Seydou Keïta and Malik Sidibé were born into modest families and began their careers in small photographic studios in Mali’s capital city of Bamako. They parade their fellow citizens in front of their lens during crucial years in the country’s andAfrica’s history. They immortalize with extraordinary skill not only an exceptional gallery of faces and figures, but above all they capture the aspirations, fashions, and evolution of a society that from the 1950s onward changes rapidly both as a consequence of Mali’s regained political independence in 1960, but also of the desire of young Africans to keep up with their European peers.

From a generation after Keïta and Sidibé, Samuel Fosso picks up where the others left off. He, too, begins his career in a small photographic studio with no ambition to be an artist, but his work, which alternates black and white with color, is not composed like Keïta’s and Sidibé’s of portraits of others. Fosso begins almost as a game to portray himself, and his work develops through self-portraits in which he ironically interprets the stereotypes of Africa seen through the eyes of the West or in which he reincarnates, starting with Malcolm X, the figures symbolic of black emancipation.

The itinerary can be configured as a “relay race,” as curator Filippo Maggia calls it, which allows us to cover a long period of African history. “Keïta,” Maggia writes, “is active in the years preceding Mali’s independence (which occurred in 1960), Sidibé lives and narrates the years immediately following independence, Fosso was born in the years when several African countries achieved independence. A relay race that we also find in the content of their images, as if the narrative thread traced by Keïta in the late 1940s had then found its own evolutionary path that runs hand in hand with the progressive conquest and manifestation of a conscious ’African-ness,’ a hallmark that we read in their portraits, which not coincidentally become self-portraits in Fosso.”

Through the genre of portraiture, which for historical, political, social and religious reasons has been the favorite genre of many African photographers, the exhibition at the Magazzino delle idee thus recounts through extraordinarily beautiful images an Africa of rebirth and search for its own identity, documenting the social aspirations of the subjects photographed against the backdrop of a cultural, political and economic reality with characteristics and urgencies far removed from those of the West.

Seydou Keïta opened his studio in the new neighborhood of Bamako-Coura in 1948, which became a place not only for portraits but also for meetings, from his studio passed the bourgeoisie of Bamako to be photographed. In those years, most clients preferred to be portrayed in traditional African clothing, which Keïta often “blurs” with the fabrics that serve as a backdrop. The end result is a sumptuous image in which the model expresses confidence and authority. In 1960 Mali became independent, and Keïta photographs the years of transition and the search for his country’s identity. Keïta is a photographer at the disposal of the people; his portraits are not artistic ambitions; he portrays women, children, and men posing in front of backdrops he creates. The subjects have their portraits taken in their traditional clothes or dressed Western-style with jewelry and neat hairstyles: they have the chance to be represented as they see themselves, the dignity in their looks and the pride in showing themselves freely. The images on display in the exhibition are historical, anthropological and social documents, as a mirror of an era and a culture, and a visual product with artistic value for the choice of backdrops, props, sharpness and harmony of the photos. Seydou Keïta chooses to photograph in black and white throughout his life.

Malick Sidibé studied at the Sudan School of Craftsmen in Bamako and graduated in drawing and jewelry in 1955. Invited by Gérard Guillat-Guignard, known as Gégé la Pellicule, he decorates his “Photo Studio” and there begins to photograph. In 1962 he opened “Studio Malick” in the working-class Bagadadji neighborhood of Bamako where he plied his profession as a portrait photographer. Almost three lustra have passed since Keïta’s beginnings and the country has recently gained independence. The climate is effervescent, they still look to Europe but no longer as a colony, now importing new fashions to make them their own. In the 1970s, the subjects of Sidibé’s portraits are mostly young people, a new generation that wants to show off its exuberance and freshness, boys riding motorcycles or disguised as hunters, musicians, boxers or soldiers, young mothers or groups of girls in traditional dress. Sidibé documents the festivities that from midnight continue until 4 a.m., sometimes until 6 a.m. Sunday morning, then end on the banks of the Niger River.

Samuel Fosso began working as a photographer’s assistant very young, at the age of 12, and only a year later opened his own studio in Bangui, "Studio Photo Nationale." Between 1975 and 1978 he produced a series of self-portraits (initially to finish rolls and send his photographs to his grandmother who remained in Nigeria) collected under the explanatory title 70’s Lifestyle. Seeing the transformation of his own appearance, he emphasizes it by wearing Western clothes, such as bell bottoms and tight shirts, imitating the poses of LP covers. And it was around this concept that Fosso then built his modus operandi, the theater of the imagination, around which he developed his production in the following years, each time adding feeling and political quality to his work. The process of maturing and perfecting an autonomous African identity now capable of critical expression toward the Western world seems to be accomplished in Fosso step by step. In 1997 he worked for a French department store chain with the Tati series. In this series he himself appears in stage costumes and plays various characters. In his work he constantly searches for identity by going beyond mere “staging.” Creative self-portraits, performances and transformism: this is the investigation that Fosso pursues in the search for his own identity and that of his continent.

Completing the exhibition is the reconstruction of a photographic studio as that of Keïta and Sidibé. This is an opportunity for visitors to identify with the places and atmosphere from which many of the photographs in the exhibition originated, taking a portrait of themselves on a never-before-seen set with vintage furniture and objects that recall the very setting of the works on display. The photograph can be posted on one’s social channels using the following hashtags and tags: #magazzinodelleidee @magazzinodelleidee.

For all information, you can visit the official website of the Warehouse of Ideas.

Trieste, major contemporary African portrait painters at the Magazzino delle Idee

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.