Silhouettes – sometimes his own – almost tranquil, often soft colors, always monochrome backgrounds, and often a flower that seems a little lost or dozens that abound… The works that Amadou Sanogo presents at the Parisian gallery Magnin-A cannot leave the visitor indifferent. They of course resemble its creator, born in Mali, who, when we meet him, seems reserved or even detached, but whose gaze captures well what surrounds him.
Besides, isn’t the exhibition called “Yebali Lakali”, which means “Telling the Invisible” in Bambara (Bamana), one of the Malian national languages? As Simon Njami, Cameroonian writer, essayist, curator and art critic, who knew the artist when he was just a student, points out, “art for [Amadou Sanogo] was a simple thing. A means of expression that allowed us to tell the world who we were and why we did what we did. Work, far from any conventional discourse, as the only tangible element of recognition. He never called himself Malian because he knew how to be. He never proclaimed himself contemporary, he always was. And among all the lures stirred by high-sounding and hollow definitions, he always called himself a painter without any further embellishment.
“An undeniable strength, a presence”
Amadou Sanogo was born in 1977 in Ségou, some 235 kilometers northeast of Bamako. His ancestors, nobles and peasants, are Sénoufo, a people settled between southern Mali, Burkina Faso and northern Ivory Coast. They founded the locality of Zangorola in the Sikasso region, in southern Mali, which belonged to the kingdom of Kénédougou. Their kings Tiéba and Babemba Traoré are known and respected for having been among the last opponents of the French colonial army at the end of the 19th century. The forty-year-old is the heir of this land of resistance.
Despite his parents’ ardent wish for him to begin engineering studies, Amadou Sanogo was very young passionate about bogolan, the emblematic fabric of Mali, a spun and woven cotton displaying a whole symbolism of signs specific to each village, each community. or each artist. Against the advice of his family, he decided to take the entrance exam for the National Institute of Arts (INA) in Bamako, after ultimately receiving his father’s blessing, even if, he told him, ” a noble should not indulge in griot activities.” It’s 1997.
“That’s where I really discovered painting and all the possibilities it offered me. I went from discovery to discovery and the adventure continues,” underlines Amadou Sanogo. At INA, one of his professors, Moktar Haïdara, remembers that he was nicknamed “the rebel” by the students and the teaching staff: he knew exactly what he wanted, even if it meant shaking up habits and conventions, and was never very far from protest movements for better consideration of students’ demands.
André Magnin, deputy curator of the legendary exhibition “Magiciens de la terre” at the Georges-Pompidou center and the Grande Halle de la Villette in 1989, which presented non-Western contemporary works of art for the first time in France, and founder from the Magnin-A gallery, remembers his first meeting in 2011 with Amadou Sanogo in Bamako, in his studio: “We spoke at length and I was very surprised by his depth. He had rare, thoughtful and precise words. Like the man, his work of apparent simplicity actually exudes an undeniable strength, a presence. »
“Standing on the canvas [which rests on the ground], the artist traces the characters with a brush, finger or directly with the acrylic tube, shapes placed in the center of the work. Its graphic strength is accentuated by the presence of objects, signs, circles, dotted lines, lines, etc. Everything is built and balanced around these figures, according to the colors. Amadou Sanogo is a great colorist. In particular the background color, prepared for each painting, most often monochrome,” insists André Magnin.
With this exhibition whose works are very inspired by Bambara proverbs, elements of vernacular wisdom, words in parables to notably advise young and old during vigils, the Segovian “wants to better understand the world around us, thanks in particular to this poetic idea of ??“telling the invisible”. Isn’t it the role of an artist to transmit it, to tell what we cannot perceive? “. The central characters in Amadou Sanogo’s paintings are at the heart of his questions, well installed in monochrome backgrounds, representing the immensity that surrounds us: blue for fear, red for vitality, green for nature…
“Transmitting a truth”
Christophe Person, founder and director of the gallery of the same name, specializing in contemporary African art, “likes [his] figures with hieratic immobility. He is the archetype of the artist whose work comes out of the frame, a bit like his silhouettes with part of their body coming out of the screen in the background from where they are supposed to take a break. Amadou Sanogo manages to create an impression of depth of field and, suddenly, the scene plays out even if we recognize neither the setting nor the actors. When I remember that perspective was invented in the 15th century in Italy, I always wonder if artists like Sanogo play with or simply do without this process… of importation.”
The compositions exhibited blur the reading codes of those who are trained in Western art history. When it confuses us, when it confronts us with otherness, the work of the Malian forces us to take a step back, therefore to make room for another proposal. It puts us in better conditions to know ourselves better. “The most difficult thing is finding harmony in the canvas so that the audience understands what I’m trying to say. What is important is to convey the truth, the rest is just conventions,” he says.
Finally, Amadou Sanogo is a generous man, concerned about the future of the generation of upcoming artists. In Bamako, he is creating a cultural center which will allow young people in particular to work. Still under construction, it will be named Makôrô, in homage to his mother, Binta Diarra. And because in the history of the Diarra, we never cease to praise Makôrô, the mother of King Monzon, of the Bambara kingdom of Ségou. Painting will of course be present there, but also sculpture, design, literature, theater, curiosity workshops for children… Without forgetting a place for storytellers.
Located near the “hill of power”, that of the presidential palace in Koulouba, in the Sokonafing district of Bamako, the center will have a surface area of ??800 m2 on two levels. The structural work is almost finished, under the supervision of architect Sébastien Philippe, a long-time friend of Amadou Sanogo. opening in 2025.