l'artiste KSK -Kadiatou Sinay Kanté

Kadiatou SINAY KANTé carries in her suitcases, lined with colorful stickers, training of every kind: arboriculture, botany, intercultural logistics… In Paris, she works in ceramic creation, porcelain painting, object design, and sculpture. In 2011, she was selected by Ateliers d’Art de France. She moved to Réunion Island in 2012 and would go on to become President of the UFUNGUZI Federation—“the door we open”—art open to diversity and evolution. She also chairs the DUNIA association, a blend of multicultural art: “developing one’s artistic potential, sharing knowledge through multicultural exchange.” In 2014, she worked in her studio at the Domaine des Tourelles in La Plaine des Palmistes, Réunion, where she exhibited her work and led artistic workshops for children, adults, and children with disabilities. In 2015, she was appointed Regional Delegate for Réunion Island to Ateliers d’Art de France, and was invited by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to take part in FetAfrik in the Seychelles. She has exhibited in Barcelona, Paris, Réunion Island, the Comoros, and the Seychelles. At MADAK in 2016, the Dakar Art Market, held alongside the Biennale of Contemporary African Art. She exhibited at the Villa de la Région. She received the 2016 Trophy from the eastern commune of La Plaine des Palmistes for her community engagement through her association DUNIA. She is a self-taught ceramic artist. She has radiant determination, curiosity running through her veins, and the ambition to make matter sing. A predestination, one might think, when one bears a name with such a melodic rhythm as hers: “Kadiatou Sinay Kanté.” Her creations hum with blended sounds; a blending that Kadiatou carries in her Senegalese, Malian, and Breton origins. She channels this mingling of cultures through her hands and reinvents it in a joyful ballet of volumes, colors, and materials. Her materials and inspired choices tune themselves like an orchestra before a concert: the brilliance of porcelain, earthenware mixed with wooden beads, the softness of clays, the murmurs of tamarind and lilac woods gently fall silent beneath the incursion of bronze, when suddenly the shimmer of a few scattered leaves of gold disperses the light… Meanwhile, discreet scents of beeswax rise from the bellies of her vases. At the entrance to her studio, one can already hear the rustle of Mother Nature’s secrets, which the ceramic artist reveals to those who know how to look. She observes, draws, models, sculpts, mixes, grinds, pigments, inlays, stipples, scratches, fires… And each piece ultimately bursts forth from her hands with the accidental beauty of an explosion of joy. From the many techniques she has accumulated, to inspired experiments and the mastery of her gestures, the charm and vitality of her person cannot be separated from her work. One readily imagines her as a priestess of white, red, and black earth, allowing herself to be guided by an entirely organic intuition that is skillfully transmuted in her crater-cups veined with soft oils and ochre pigments, her coral vases in marbled earthenware, another piece intent on capturing the flight of birds, or even her Dogon boxes whose opening is slow to reveal itself, like a secret passage. And so the use of these everyday objects becomes a poetic ritual in every moment. Her pieces demand their existence with the commanding joy of being in the world. Even as a child, her restless hands delighted in staging materials of every kind. Might Kadiatou possess that precious ability to have kept close to her the soul of a child, whispering in her ear the playfulness of her colors, the boldness of her combinations, and the purity of her lines? One senses that her intimate relationship with the earth carries her lightly from one hemisphere to the other. One suspects that a single burst of her laughter releases enough momentum to cross through trials and materials alike. One concludes that her relationship with objects has everything to do with her relationship with life. Kadiatou works at this vital transposition by capturing moments within forms. And through the alchemy of her nature, her work, and her art, she succeeds in making those moments resonate. So let us, seekers of beauty, wish that she may continue for a long time to breathe into her creations these colorful songs, so harmonious with love. Since then, she has settled in the Land of Teranga. ISABELLE MARTINEZ