Sadikou Oukpedjo (b. 1975, Kétao, Togo) lives and works in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. In 1998, Sadikou Oukpedjo joined Paul Ahyi’s studio where he essentially worked on wood carving and assembly. In addition to woodworking, he started painting and diversifying his experiments: cement paper, pastel highlight, chalk, colors, canvases. In 2013, after a stay in Bamako, he moved to Abidjan where he devoted himself entirely to painting.
Upon returning from the Dakar Biennale 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. He questions the notions of heritage and origin through the prism of current issues and West-African cosmogony and anthropogony.
Group exhibition include those after various exhibitions in different places over Africa, in London and the Netherlands, his work was exhibited for the first time in 2015 in Lagos, Nigeria, in the exhibition Platform, presented by Art Twenty One (Art 21) and he participated in the Fondation Blachère art residency program in La Somone, Senegal. In 2016, Galerie Cécile Fakhoury presented his works in the solo exhibition Anima and at the Fringe and at 12th Dakar Biennale in the exhibition Une collection particulière. At the end of that year, he participated in residencies at the Threat – Tambacounda of the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation and at La Vallée in Brussels. In 2017, his works were presented at the Grand Palais for Art Paris Art Fair and at Sommerset House in London for 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair. In 2018, he took part in the exhibition Des Hommes et des Totems alongside with Amadou Sanogo and Soly Cissé at Galerie Le Manège, Dakar, Sénégal. In the same year Oukpedjo was selected to take part in the Institut Français residency program at the Cité Internationale des Art de Paris. Oukpedjo artworks were shown in the exhibition Kubatana in Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium in 2019.
Highlights and Collections
His works are part of different public and private collections, for example Blachère Foundation, Museum Mohammed VI, Luciano Benetton Foundation, Gervane & Matthias Léridon Foundation and Tiroche Deleon Collection. Besides he created marble sculptures titled "The Council of Elders" for the public garden of the new Palais de Lomé in Togo – a memorial against German colonialism.