Malick Sidibe x Zainab Sumu - Mali

Malick Sidibé x Zainab Sumu — Mali

Works from this collection are held in the permanent collection of the Peabody Essex Museum.

Malick Sidibé was the Eye of Bamako. His black and white portraits of postcolonial Malian youth — dancing, laughing, defining themselves for the camera — earned him the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale in 2007, the first African and first photographer to receive that honor.

This is not a licensing collaboration. It is a friendship made visible. Zainab Sumu visited Sidibé’s studio in Bamako and formed lasting friendship with his sons Mody, Kareem, and Zakaria, who continue to manage the studio today. She owns original prints of all four photographs in this collection.

Each shirt fuses one of Sidibé’s photographs with a textile print from her Djenné Series — architectural abstraction meeting human presence. Two artists. One shared West African cultural vision.

Edition of 100. Approximately 50 remain.