ARTIST PHOTOGRAPHER
AISSATOU CISS
PRESENTATION OF THE ARTIST
Aïssatou Ciss’s photographic practice focuses on existential questions between the past and the present.
As a Senegalese artist, she combines her own experience, her cultural heritage and that of others to capture portraits of men and women. Each person’s unique experience inspires her and feeds her “quest for knowledge”.
Her work questions the relationship between human beings and their own lives, between the real and the imaginary. The still image, in black and white and sometimes in colour, enables him to extend and poetise dark stories and authentic narratives, inviting the viewer to enter into a dialogue with his or her own existence.
THE PIECES CREATED
DURING THE “MBEDD MI MBEDDUM BUUR LA” RESIDENCE
Mbëtu Mbedd I
Through this series of photographs, I show the richness of poverty in our streets.
My approach is to freeze a childhood in which the street was a home, to denounce our behaviour as inhabitants of the earth, to engage in dialogue and reinvent the way we look at our public spaces.
In our cities, such as Dakar, vegetation is disappearing more and more, and public space is occupied in an anarchic way, which leads me to ask myself: isn’t believing oneself to be king of the street just an illusion?
I ask these questions by inviting rich and poor to reinvent public space.
The white sheet represents my childhood in these same streets, and the wire mesh is a mask that binds us together, a link between us and the public space. It’s also a way of marking the disorderly occupation of our streets!
Mbëtu Mbedd II
