Beyond capturing the ultra stylish hipness of his post-colonial cohorts, Sidibé joyfully affirms the lives, identities and aspirations of a generation reaching for freedom and asserting their modernity into the world. Beyond that, his photographic images have become part of a visual lexicon that resonates and extends to communities worldwide.
After all colonization was essentially based on the art of seeing – of seeing the other through the perspective or gaze of the western world. Or fixing the observed other in a frame or lens like photographer or a hunter tracing a wild thing through the pistol’s lens.
Because of the way he is working on a painting or a drawing – slowly, with refined lines, a soft touch, focused on details, but also very much aware of the spatial effects, the effect of empty spaces juxtaposing ‘filled’ spaces – his works are more of an emotional representation or interpretation of the reality.
“As a young black female person I feel that my reality and history always call for me to transcend my experiences of being black in an anti-black and anti-woman world. The call for reconciliation in South Africa asks me to transcend my growing up in the township and the violence that comes with that.”
Shabu’s mixed-media paintings explore the frail condition of humanity and the callous ways in which we treat each other. In a ravenous world, wheeled by the rich and powerful, he genuinely and relentlessly empathizes with the kind, the poor, and the displaced.