'Mysterious half-man, half-animal beings appear on the canvas in surreal, seemingly mythological scenes […] Through visually raw and dynamic imagery, the Ivory Coast-based artist explores existence following the belief that man was first created as a hybrid being.'
—Millie Walton, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery
In 1998, Sadikou Oukpedjo joined Paul Ahyi’s studio where he worked on wood carving and assembly. In addition to woodworking, he started painting and diversifying his experiments: cement paper, pastel highlight, chalk, colours, canvases. In 2013, after a stay in Bamako, he moved to Abidjan where he devoted himself entirely to painting. Upon returning from Dak’Art in 2014, he began a series of drawings on newsprint that consist of characters that are all at once human and animal which were first presented at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair London in 2014.
In 2015, Oukpedjo’s work was exhibited for the first time in Lagos, in the exhibition Platform, presented by Art Twenty-One (ART 21) and he participated in a Fondation Blachère art residency program in La Somone, Senegal. In 2016, the artist presented his first solo exhibition Anima, at Galerie Cécile Fakhoury in Abidjan. His work was also shown at the Fringe of the 12th Dakar Biennale in the exhibition Une collection particulière. As well as undertaking a residency at La Vallée in Brussels, Sadikou also participated in the Africa First residency in Israel in 2018, which culminated in an exhibition at the African Studies Gallery in April 2018.
Recalling the hybrid creatures of Greek mythology, Oukpedjo’s figures are ‘simultaneously strange and familiar’, as Millie Walton of Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery has described: ‘Beyond spiritual and cultural narratives, Oukpedjo’s hybrid beings encompass the struggles and mutations that lead to the formation of a national and personal identity. […] The artist’s attempt to create a new mythology, which promotes unity and integrity rather than continual conflict.’i
