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Traces and Echoes: Mixed Media Paintings of Kalidou Sy
- Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art
- Duke University Press
- Number 24, 2009
- pp. 82-91
- Article
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TRACES AND ECHOES Mixed Media Paintings of KALIDOU SY Joanna Grabski D uring his career of nearly four decades, Senegalese-born artist Kalidou Sy (19482005 ) traversed several boundaries— geographical, professional, and creative. As the mixed-media works in this exhibition attest, he was committed to exploring the conceptual, visual , and material resources he encountered in moving across and within a given domain. Insomuch as these works suggest the artist's attitude toward the places he inhabited, they also reveal his deepening appreciation of techniques and resources from his homeland, Africa. The works in this exhibition were made while Kalidou Sy lived in the United States from 1997 to 2005. Originally from Dakar, Sy moved to Bloomington, Indiana, in 1997. He moved to University Park, Maryland, in 2002 and returned to Bloomington in 2004. Though residing primarily in Bloomington, the artist also divided his time between New Orleans and Dakar, where he died in 2005. Sy spoke of the work he made during his years in the United States as his Bogolan series, a reference to bdgdlanfini—"mudcloth" in the Bamana language—a hand-dyed and painted cotton cloth made using natural materials such as fermented mud. He explained, "In 1997 when I moved to the American continent, my Kalidou Sy, 1995, Gor ee, Seneg al . Ph ot o: Mag aye Ni ang . Journal of Contemporary African Art Man from the South, 2 0 0 1 . Acrylic, clay, and burlap on canvas, 4 4 x 37 in. Collect ion of Eileen Julien. Ph ot o by Mi ch ael Cavan ag h and Kevin Mo n t ag u e, court esy Indiana University Ar t Mu seu m . N k a - 8 3 Nude, 1998. Acrylic, clay, cord, an d m et al on canvas, 21 x 21 in. Collect ion of Aud r ey and Jo h n McCluskey. Phot o by Michael Cavanag h an d Kevin Mo n t ag u e, court esy Indiana University Ar t Mu seu m . approach to painting changed. I began connecting modern acrylic painting with the basic materials of the earth—mud, pigments, metal, cloth, wood, and water. Only then did I realize that this work was inspired by the Malian technique of bogolan. This technique brings together natural materials such as clay, water, iron, vegetable extracts, etc. to create unique patterns on cloth. To me, bogolan means life present, past, and future. By using this approach, 1 strive to bring together the subtle yet real traces of life present in color, matter, and texture."1 Sy found affinities with bdgolanfini artists in their c o m m o n approach to exploring and utilizing the resources particular to their environments . He also felt a connection to the multistep process of bdgolanfini, which involves applying materials in consecutive phases. In an interview in Dakar in 1999, Sy explained that he positioned himself as "an artiste-chercheur" whose attitude 8 4 - rJka Journal of Contemporary African Art toward exploration and experimentation drove both his creative process and artistic style.2 At the center of Sy's visual production was his commitment to research the aesthetic possibilities of the materials and techniques he encountered in his many environments. The Canvas and the Artist's Environment Sy became a practicing artist in the early 1970s, a period when Senegalese artistic production began to move away from "Negritude"-inspired work celebrating what independence-era President Leopold Sedar Senghor described as the Black contribution to universal civilization.3 Whereas the works created during Senegal's immediate postindependence period of the 1960s depicted folkloric and decorative African cultural subjects, artists working in the 1970s and 1980s explored new artistic terrain, due in large part to changes in their training and decreasing government patronage. Sy was among those artists whose training and creative vision fostered a desire to go beyond the formal vocabulary and philosophical tenets associated with Negritude. Having studied at the National School of Fine Arts and the National School of Art Education in Senegal as well as at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Belgium, Sy had artistic training that was rooted in strong academic traditions and exposure to diverse artistic trends. While...