I like the shadow because the shadow is neutral.
The shadow is my childhood.
The shadow has guided me in art.
I like the imaginary side of the shadow.
(Saïdou Dicko)
The Print Room at the Photographers’ Gallery
Downstairs at the Photographers’ Gallery (PG) is the Print Room. Here they have rotating displays of works by the 30 or so professional photographers from around the world which the PG commercially represents i.e. all the works are for sale.
It’s a small space but it’s large enough to hang ten or so works by each photographer and it’s often a relief to only have to process a small number of works rather than the 50, 60, 70 images up in the main galleries. And they tend to be the best of the best. And, unlike the main exhibition galleries, it’s FREE!
Saïdou Dicko
Currently on display is a selection of ten big colourful works by Saïdou Dicko. These are absolutely wonderful. Striking silhouettes of Black figures against highly colourful, vivid fabric backdrops.
Pirate act 1, T NID abeilles by Saïdou Dicko (2024): £3,850 + VAT = £4,620
Burkina Faso
Saïdou Dicko was born in the African nation of Burkina Faso in 1979. Where is Burkina Faso? It is a landlocked country to the west of Nigeria and south of Mali. From 1958 to 1984 it was known as the Republic of Upper Volta. It was renamed Burkina Faso by president Thomas Sankara in 1984. Its citizens are known as Burkinabes, and its capital and largest city is Ouagadougou. It was a French colony which is why the official language remains French.
Saïdou Dicko
Amazingly, Dicko started life as a shepherd in the Sahel, where he began drawing by tracing the shadows of his sheep in the sand, and then drawing the outlines of bushes, animals the river and so on. This formative act, the tracing of shadows or outlines, remains one cornerstone of his work, as the outlines or silhouettes of all the figures in all these pieces demonstrate, and it explains the title of the show.
And yet there’s a lot more going on, isn’t there? Because the shadows or outlines are quite obviously placed against gorgeous, colourful fabric backgrounds. These, as you might expect, are based on traditional fabrics and designs from his native land (the correct adjective is Burkinabè – these are Burkinabè fabrics).
TGV ouaga lome, TMS2 by Saïdou Dicko (2023): £2,575 + VAT = £3,090
And the smart but casual poses and dress of the human subjects also references the specific aesthetic of African studio photography. Hence the very attractive tension or dichotomy between the realistic and expressive figures, and the utterly abstract background patterns.
The red crosses above the heads of the figures? These also echo his childhood being a reference to a motif in a particular fabric from the Peulh tradition which he saw in the traditional rugs of his youth. For him, it is a way to pay a tribute to beauty and to represent the humanity of his characters. To us western viewers a red cross is a global symbol of distress, precisely the kind of poverty and famine Africa has so often been associated with.
La plume act 1, T UK Lines by Saïdou Dicko (2025): £2,575 + VAT = £3,090
To those of us brought up in the Western tradition of spy movies and thrillers it momentarily reminded me of a target, the kind of target you see through telephoto lenses or some such weaponry hovering over the target of an assassination. I strongly doubt any of this was in Dicko’s mind but meaning has its own agendas.
Transformations
Dicko’s process is to take photographs of people and then transform them with paint and collage. His subjects, reduced to silhouettes without facial features, thereby become allegorical figures, symbols of African humanity set against fabric backgrounds registering ancestral traditions, heritage and memory.
Although faces are defeatured, beads and jewellery remain visible, highlighting their cultural significance and some other everyday items are elevated by the shadowplay into subtle symbols. It’s all nicely, deftly done.
Fragile
The only thing I didn’t really like is that three of the ten images have an intrusive white frame around which has been stencilled the word FRAGILE in red capital letters.
Installation view of Saïdou Dicko: Tracing Shadows @ the Photographers’ Gallery Print Room showing two of the ‘Fragile’ works (photo by the author)
From the wall labels we learn that this does, indeed, have a sort of political significance. As the curators put it:
Dicko subtly reframes plastic vessels as essential tools in regions where access to clean water is limited – acknowledging the fragility of this reality while representing the care and creativity of sustainable reuse.
But it is, in my opinion, rather a blunt tool, a hammer to crack a nut. Its blatancy rather overwhelms the subtlety and beauty of the images themselves, which are already things of great delicacy and fragility without any moralising.
Related Black artists
All I mean by this is that the combination of black silhouettes with vibrant traditional fabrics reminded me of a couple of other Black artists who might interest you, namely:
Kara Walker
The use of black silhouettes reminds me powerfully of the African-American artist Kara Walker, who we’ve met in The American Dream: pop to the present at the British Museum, in the Royal Academy’s slavery and Black art exhibition, and in her huge slavery installation in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall. I hope it’s not inappropriate to point out that maybe the idea of silhouette art is suggested by the quality of black skin which can render a Black person more easily into a silhouette (in many lights), whereas facets of lighter skin tone are, maybe, more detectable in the faces and figures of people of non-Black – European, Latino, Chinese, Japanese and so on – descent. Maybe.
Yinka Shonibare CBE
As to the use of brightly coloured, highly decorative patterns and fabrics with an ethnic African vibe, it’s only a few months since I went to the fairly big exhibition by Yinka Shonibare CBE, Suspended States at Serpentine South. In this, Shonibare used the patterns from ‘traditional’ fabrics (which, the exhibition told us, actually derived from Dutch traders bringing fabrics back from Indonesia and selling them at waystations on the west Africa coast) and applied them to old imperial statues, as well as including them in his print works, especially of native African birds. A few of these are also on display at the current Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. It’s Dickou’s use of African fabric designs which reminded me of Shonibare.
Related links
- Saïdou Dicko: Tracing Shadows continues at the Photographers’ Gallery until 7 September 2025
- Full list of works on display
- Saïdou Dicko’s website
Books & Boots 