Portrait

Sanda Amadou was born and raised in 1978 in a Fulani community in Northern Benin. He holds a PhD in Sociolinguistics (University of Ghana, Accra) and received art education through residencies and master’s workshops. He lived and worked in Lagos for several years, but returned to Cotonou, Benin in 2019. From his early childhood he drew, fascinated by the culture and tattoos of the nomadic Fulani, which he still studies and reinterprets.

Amadou has developed a unique semi-abstract style of drawing and painting exploring and depicting the universe based on these impressive body marks and spent the first 6 years of his artistic career (1999-2005) on Fulani tattoos. His first solo exhibition was held in Nyamey (Republic of Niger) in 2002 at the Palais des Congres. From 2006 onwards, he redirected his research on the universe of the nomadic Fulani herdsmen, increasingly connecting it to the outside world, mixing and connecting it in various ways with other worlds of culture, for example in his dance, poetry and divinities studies. His divinities study led him amongst others to the concept of sacredness.

His works seem to obey a rigorous geometry and form complex architectures, which are simultaneously playful and surprisingly fragile. Lines, circles, triangles and quadrilaterals, semi-mathematical figures that are never perfect, connect Fulani symbols of of natural life with ropes at its base. His images result in imaginary forms and grotesque figures that show a ragged vulnerability, ethereal and always in motion. They allow the viewer to glimpse an unreal essence.

In his more recent work Amadou is experimenting with 3D effects adding different textures and sculpting on canvas with plated synthetic hairs in different variations. For his Sacred places series he uses these braids to create sacred forest monasteries as a metaphor for the need to canonise and protect the natural environment and rebalance human relationship with nature.

In his latest experiment, Amadou is returning to his research of the Fulani facial tattoos, working on a new series of almost geometrical abstracts interpreting and reshaping these tattoos into new meanings.

Amadou is a recognized artist both domestically and internationally. He has participated in many solo and collective exhibitions over the years, including in Benin Republic, Togo, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Dubai, Germany, the Netherlands and the US (San Francisco and New York) and has been featured at major international art exhibitions and fairs such as World Art Dubai and at ARTX Lagos (Nigeria), and AKAA Paris (groep 2021 and 2023, and solo 2022)