OBJET / HOMME / ANIMAL

​

Solo show by Fatoumata Diabate 

 

28 March - 27 April 2019

​

Fatoumata Diabate, (born in 1980) is a Malian photographer. She lives and works between Montpellier and Bamako.  

​

Interested in portraits, as well as in social and cultural photography, her images focus on women and young generations in Mali. Oral tradition, beliefs and transmission are at the core of her artistic expression. In her portraits, everyday objects, improvised masks and fabrics become the symbolic vehicles of a shared living memory that is constantly reinvented. 

​

For her first solo exhibition in Paris, Fatoumata Diabate presents a selection of artworks from two series: L’Homme en animal (Man as animal) and L’Homme en objet (Man as object). Two photographic projects realised between 2011 and 2015 around the role of stories and tales in the structuring of the individual in Mali. A strong symbolic language, where the object and the animal question our relation to the world, modifying the bodies and masking the human figure. 

 

After studying photography at the Promo Femmes audiovisual training centre and at the CFP in Bamako from 2002 to 2004, Fatoumata Diabaté worked as a technician in the silver laboratory until 2009. In 2014 and 2015, she was awarded a scholarship at the ENSA in Nancy. 

 

Her work has been shown in several exhibitions in Mali, France and around the world, notably at the Fondation Blachère (2012), the Muséum national du Havre (2017), the Hong Museum in Chengdu and the Shuter Art Space in Guangzhou (2019). 

 

Fatoumata Diabaté has also taken part in the Bamako Biennial of Photography (2009, 2011), the Voies Off Festival in Arles (2018), the Dakar Biennial (2018) and the La Gacilly Photo Festival (2017). Since December 2017, she is president of the association of female photographers in Mali.

​

​

​