Transient Permanence
Sadio Diallo
Transient Permanence seeks to make visible both the fluidity of cultures and communities as well as the temporal nature of times and epochs in West Africa. Sadio Diallo comes from a bicultural lineage encompassing Mali and Senegal and one that manifests from the encounter between the sedentary and the nomadic cultures of the Fulani and Serere peoples of West Africa. For example, ancient Dogon symbols - documenting a complex cosmology, populate his works. They are juxtaposed in increasingly dizzying overlays with very modern, cosmopolitan, and global symbols aspired to by all: Nike, Coca Cola, Converse. Sadio's creations beckon the viewer into a treasure hunt to search for the ancient and the modern and everything in between.
Novelists and Academics: Dr. Chika Unigwe and Samuel Kolawole in conversation about contemporary literature from the African Continent.
Sadio's work in this collection works on many levels. At first, his brush strokes mirror the seeming chaos of Dakar streets: taxis, Cafe Touba carts, people, animals, half finished buildings, sun, ocean and dust. On a second level the work layers the incredible aesthetic evident in the choices Dakar inhabitants make in terms of how they dress, present themselves and navigate their lives. This style is a patina that coats everything, whether it is the sign on the corner boutique, the painted mass transit vans or a man dressed to the nines strutting his stuff. The third layer goes deep and it anchors this whole urban experience with its wild innovation and constantly evolving cool factor with traditions dating back centuries in time and far beyond the present day geography of Dakar and even Senegal.
Sadio is completely self taught, learning symbiotically from the streets and their inhabitants. He lingered and learned in studios of practicing artists eventually making the move from the city of Dakar on the mainland to Ngor Island which sits off the West African coast a five minute pirogue ride from Dakar. On Ngor Island Sadio became one of a tight knit group of multi faceted 'street artists' earning a living from the tourists that frequent Dakar.Senegal has never been a mass tourist destination and travellers tended to be and remain largely eclectic and attracted by the cultures of Senegal that are so creative. From these encounters - Sadio refined his work until one day a tourist left him a Basquiat catalogue, and the rest is history. To this date, the viewer can easily decipher Basquiat's influence, which begs the question whose work informed Basquiat and there we are full circle in the constant ebb and flow that is the African Diaspora.
