Malike Sidibe

Photography: Portraits | Fashion | Editorial | Commercial

Malike Sidibe is a 25-year-old artist originally from the Ivory Coast. Besides producing beautiful work that is influenced by his African heritage, Sidibe has gained global recognition for his emotive and poignant images documenting the Black Lives Matter Movement. His clients include Time Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, MET Museum, Nike, Instagram, Footlocker, Nikon USA, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, Stern Magazine, The Atlantic, Esquire Magazine, Town and Country Magazine, and many others.

Contact: (646) 918-9395, malikes@ymail.com

Instagram: @malikesidibe

Website: https://malikesidibe.com/

NYC Salt High School Residency 2014 - 2015

NYC Salt Mentorship 2014 - Present

NYC Salt Emerging Artist Program: 2020 - 2023

Parson’s School of Design

Fashion/Portraiture:

Major themes in my portraiture are movement and surreal visual-scapes. I love playing with the subjects, frozen still as if suspended in a dream, sometimes placing them deeply set within their environments, such as in my Mamiwata Series, or conversely, existing on their own plane, as if my lens had the power to suck the air out of the room. I’m especially focused on this technique when capturing a moving subject. A silk scarf swaying in harmony with a woman or pearls dancing from the cap of a seemingly still man, capture the traces of a subject who is most interesting in my eye when they are moving and in harmony with the space.

BLM Protests June 2020, NYC

“Please Stop the Violence”

A central goal of my documentary photography is to help different people demystify one another’s personhood through visual language. I grew up in West Africa in a community where I was surrounded by other people who looked like me and who were raised with the same traditions and values as I was.

Upon moving to New York City, the heterogenous make-up of my new community excited me, but slowly revealed some pitfalls. When people don’t look or think exactly the same as one another, they often begin to fear each other. At the onset of the Covid Pandemic in 2020, people the world over realized the value of human connection and that it cannot be taken for granted. We were forced to distance ourselves from one another and in this moment of craving connection, we witnessed the heinous murder of George Floyd by Officer Derek Chauvin. I viewed this murder as rooted in the fear of “otherness.” Chauvin, a white police officer, saw Floyd as a threat simply because he looked different. Floyd’s blackness stood in the way of Chauvin connecting with and respecting him as a fellow human. Tired of these misunderstandings, Black Americans and their allies took to the streets in protest: peaceful protest that was met with violence. I documented these protests for six months straight in an effort to show forces working for and against genuine “human connection.”

I believe the resulting “Black Lives Matter” series of photos to be my most important work to date. I hope these images express the pain that is experienced when there is a lack of human connection and mutual understanding. We must do better.

All Photographs are editioned and signed, printed on museum-grade 100% cotton fiber paper. Please contact Alicia Hansen to inquire.