Black Shade Projects and Ozwald Boateng present Crossroads by Youssouf Sogodogo, in association with Nataal
Nataal is proud to partner with Black Shade Projects and Ozwald Boateng for Crossroads, an exhibition by Malian photographer Youssouf Sogodogo. Taking place at Boateng’s Savile Row space, the show will coincide with Frieze and 1-54 art fairs in London and shine a fresh and much-deserved light on this under-recognised artist.
Black Shade Projects is the brand new brainchild of art advisor and curator Myriem Baadi, who is developing this travelling exhibition programme for African photography. “Black Shade Projects aims to grant visibility and simultaneously illustrate the various nuances and visual expressions of photography from the continent and the diaspora,” Baadi explains. Through this inaugural exhibition, and future ones planned for Marrakech and NYC next year, she intends to focus on Mali’s golden era of photography. “In addition to preserving the archives of two veterans of studio photography, namely Abdourahmane Sakaly and Adama Kouyaté, the platform’s on-going function is to address and encourage an extended conversation, with the ambition to diversify art collections as well as canons which at present inform said conversation. Black Shade Projects recounts the multifaceted stories of Africa through a more authentic narrative.”
“Composed, poised and distinguished are words that can describe both Sogodogo and his work”
Bamako-based Youssouf Sogodogo was born in 1955 and studied fine art before going into museum administration and conservation, choosing to teach himself photography in the 1980s. The artist is currently director of the influential CFP (Cadre de promotion pour la formation en photographie) and has exhibited in Senegal, Japan, Switzerland, France and Morocco, yet his work has not received the international attention of his countrymen Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé. For this, Sogodogo’s first exhibition in ten years, Black Shade Projects chooses his series, Tresses du Mali, which explores the intricate hairstyles of Malian women in the 80s.
“Composed, poised and distinguished are words that can describe both Sogodogo and his work,” Baadi continues. “Yet, Sogodogo was a rule breaker, shunning traditional studio photography, which was de rigueur at the time, for more intimate and honest depictions of Malian life. Tresses du Mali speaks poetically to the beauty of Afro hair and the artistry that is hair braiding and plaiting.”
Crossroads has been curated by artist and founder of the BBFA (Black British Female Artist) collective, Enam Gbewonyo. Her approach has been to dive into the shared cultural “codes” behind the hairstyles, and by extension, the threads that tie African artistry more widely. “Just as the braiders bring codes forth in the hairstyles depicted in Sogodogo’s works, so too do they exist in the weave of Boateng’s tailoring. And in the sculptures of Irvin Pascal and Vanessa German they appear as faint refractions,” Baadi adds.
Boateng will take the opportunity of hosting this exhibition to compliment Sogodogo’s images with pieces from his Africanism collection and to continue the themes of his recent show at Harlem’s The Apollo Theater. The gloriously immersive experience marked the centenary of the Harlem Renaissance with music, film, fashion and faces that authentically echoed the past, present and future of global African creativity.
“We are storytellers of different mediums, which binds our work in a beautiful way”
“The subject matter of the exhibition speaks to me. For African or black women, hair is the epicentre of their universe and it is something I was brought up around and have always understood,” Boateng says. “What I like about Youssouf’s work, in particular, is how he photographs the hair in an architectural way. It is also the fact that his work is from a time when that type of hair wasn’t considered ‘cool’, but he was already celebrating the beauty of that back then. There is a real opportunity now to celebrate this style of hair, more so than ever before, and that is ringing a bell for me creatively… As I express my cultural roots in my work, Youssouf does the same in his photography. We are storytellers of different mediums, which binds our work in a beautiful way.”
