Ibrahim Cissé

Born from the blissful belly of a Gambian woman, Ibrahim Cissé first came to see the light in Paris, France, in the nineties. Cissé studied communication, before dabbling in the music and cultural industries as a columnist and a trainee programmer. 

In search of greener pastures and greater alignment, Cissé crossed the channel in 2014, to assimilate the British-postcolonial-worldwide-gathering and cross-cultural landscape. After years of soul searching and unfulfilling 9 to 5 and if not, 11 to 7, Cissé eventually graduated from a Masters in curation in 2018, while working on his first artistic body of work: a self published poetry collection. 

Since then, Cissé’s research and practice have revolved around education, a visual and literary artistic practice, and freelance projects in the art industry. 

Ibrahim Cissé’s work and collaborations have featured in the 10th Berlin Biennale, at the Ball House in Beijing (China), at Mboka Literature Festival (Gambia), at the Afrikan Freedom Station in Johannesburg (South Africa), or as part of the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen touring exhibition in 2020. Cissé has exhibited sound and moving image installations at the Dyson Gallery (London, UK), OF Gallery (Seoul, South Korea) and at the Royal Academy of Art (London, UK). 

Cissé currently works as a contributing editor for Archive books, notably on the sonsbeek 20→24 series of readers. Cissé is an associate lecturer at Wimbledon College of Art (London, UK) and one of the programme facilitators and tutors in the Decolonial Futures programme hosted by the Sandberg Instituut (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) and Framer Framed, in collaboration with Funda Community College in South Africa.

Cissé currently works with the Institute of Travel and Tourism of The Gambia and Ecole Nationale des Arts de Dakar as a curriculum developer, spearheading the creation of a new Fine Art curriculum in the Gambia.

In short, Ibrahim Cissé is interested in the cathartic energy of artistic encounters, pan-africanist initiatives and horizons, and the desire to address and redress issues of social welfare.