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Indepth Arts News:
"CLUBS OF BAMAKO"
2000-03-09 until 2000-04-16
RICE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY
Houston, TX,
USA United States of America
Rice University Art Gallery, in collaboration with The Museum of Fine Arts,
Houston (MFAH), will present Clubs of Bamako an exhibition of sixteen
black and white photographs of the night club scene in Bamako, Mali in the
1960s and 1970s, by Malian photographer Malick Sidibé. The photographs
will be shown with eleven life-size sculptures by contemporary Ivory Coast
sculptors Emile Guebehi, Koffi Kouakou, and Coulibaly Siaka Paul. The
exhibition at the Rice Gallery has been planned to correspond with the
opening of the MFAH's new Audrey Jones Beck Building. The exhibition
will be on view from March 9 - April 16, 2000. The opening celebration will
take place on March 16 from 5:30-7:30 and will include live music and
dancing.
The late 1950s and early 1960s marked the end of colonial rule for much of
Africa. With this new freedom came a reexamination of the basis for national
and cultural identities that were hybrids of African and Western influences.
Malick Sidibé's photographs capture the vibrancy of this transitional
moment. The Malian night life he documented was especially lively in this
era, when clubs with names like the Happy Boys Club and Les Surfs
played music ranging from Miles Davis and James Brown to local
top-of-the-chart hits like Mali Twist by Boubacar Traoré, popularly known
as Kar Kar. The clothing worn by Sidibé's club-goers -- miniskirts, bell
bottoms and turbans fashioned of wildly patterned local fabrics -- equally
reveals a culture entrenched in two histories. Sidibé's interest in the scene
stemmed not from the viewpoint of a detached observer, but from his desire
to experience the most joyful and frivolous moments so that I could take the
pictures I liked. The result, says NY Arts magazine critic Horace
Brockington, was that the clubs and dance halls became his laboratory for
photographic experimentation rather than cultural exploitation.
Adding to the dynamism of Sidibé's photographs are eleven life-size,
polychrome wooden sculptures that, along with music of the era, will bring
the club scene alive in the gallery space. Guebehi, Kouakou and Siaka Paul
chose individuals portrayed in Sidibé's images and rendered them as
free-standing, three dimensional figures frozen in mid-movement. Koffi
Kouakou's carving, of a tall African gentleman dressed in a black suit and
top hat, stands with legs crossed as if prepared to pivot momentarily.
Coulibaly Siaka Paul depicts a couple who, while dancing with one another,
are simultaneously absorbed in their own movements. Emile Guebehi's
woman in a brightly striped miniskirt, appears to be moving to a beat that is
invisibly present in all of the figures. In the company of Sidibé's photographs,
the sculptures, according to New York Times art critic Holland Cotter, feel
fresh, vital, and larger than life, but also rooted in time and place.
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