Ibrahim Bemba Kébé

Born in Bamako, Ibrahim Bemba Kébé is a young Malian artist who graduated at the top of his class from the Balla Fasséké Kouyaté Conservatory of Multimedia Arts and Crafts in Bamako. From his father, a carpenter-welder, he learned very early about the role of drawing in construction trades and welding assembly techniques. Thereafter, he began self-taught calligraphy and screen printing and produced his first works as a painter.

In 2016, he joined the Conservatory to study visual arts, having stood out for the quality of his works and the associated research. He is a founding member and president of the very young Sanou’Arts collective, which brings together young students or graduates of the Conservatory hoping to confront the challenges of creation.

Ibrahim Bemba Kebe embarked on in-depth research into the cultural and formal riches of the Korèdugaw, which strongly inspired his painted and sculpted work. For him, it is a way of opening Mali’s art to the 21st century while firmly rooting it in the civilizational base of his country. This inspiration combined with the preference for recycling used materials that he shares with the korèdugaw, provides him with a fruitful perspective on the visual arts - a bias that he also links to concerns for the environment, a contemporary emergency par excellence.

Ibrahim Bemba Kébé’s work essentially revolves around identity and the relationship between society and tradition. He explores the different cosmogonies and their impact on the perspective, behaviour and way of being of his African contemporaries. As victims of trauma, the question of identity is recurrent for Africans and defining it is crucial for their rebirth. Kebe creates a background of a maritime universe, where several elements mix at the centre, in which Afro men and women are magnified by their beauties and attitudes.