Saïdou Dicko: Fragile

Saïdou Dicko (b. 1979) is a self-taught visual artist from Burkina Faso whose work spans across disciplines of photography, painting, videography, and installation art. Inspired by his Fulani roots, Dicko’s artistic career has taken him from the heart of West Africa to the dynamic art scene of Paris, France, where he currently lives and works.

Dicko was born in Deou, Burkina Faso, to a family of eleven children. At the age of five, Dicko began working as a shepherd in his Fulani community. He learned to draw by tracing the silhouettes of his sheep on the Sahel soils, fascinated by the interplay of light and shadow on the natural landscape. Since then, shadows have been at the heart of his work. At fifteen, Dicko took his first art lessons in painting, and in his twenties, he began to explore the medium of photography. Only six months after his photographic debut, he presented his first exhibition in the 2006 Dakar Biennial OFF, where he won a prize.

Using his signature motif of the shadow, Dicko creates portraits of figures against textured backgrounds that he enhances with paint, collage, and textile elements. His silhouetted subjects are hand-painted over in black, thereby flattened into anonymous and universalized Shadowed People. Dicko’s figures are brought to life by patterns and colors from Fulani cloth—an homage to the resilience of traditional West African craftsmanship in the face of global industrialization.

Since 2006, Dicko’s work has been presented at many international art fairs, biennials, and museum exhibitions in Europe, North America, and Africa. The artist’s work has evolved in relation to his international travels and experiences, but has remained true to his original quest for a better world. While vibrant and playful, Dicko’s art seeks to generate conversations about humanity, freedom, equality, and love. In 2012, Dicko co-founded the collective Rendez-Vous d’Artistes, a nomadic platform where artists of all kinds — curators, gallerists, art lovers, cultural journalists — can exchange ideas. Fifty percent of all sales of Dicko’s work goes to the artist’s non-profit organization, Nafoore Cellal, which benefits his native region of Yagma, a pastoral zone in Burkina Faso. Nafoore Cellal has developed a health center and pharmacy, an organic vegetable garden employing 25 women and seven men, two solar powered water towers, and 2 manual water pumps in the local community.