Olivier Sultan, contemporary African art gallery owner
Olivier Sultan in Bamako with the great Malian photographer Malick Sidibé.
Olivier Sultan personal collection
Text by: Sabine Cessou Follow |
Sabine Cessou Follow
8 min
Founder of the Art-Z gallery in Paris, Olivier Sultan started his career in Zimbabwe, before launching in the early 2000s the Museum of Late Arts, a snub to the then project, the Museum of Early Arts, the Quai Branly.
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Discreet by nature, Olivier Sultan, a slender figure whose benevolence emanates, prefers to talk about others.
Yet the Parisian gallerist, an artist himself, had several lives before becoming one of the names that count in the contemporary art market.
Child of the 1960s, he grew up in Essonne and in Val-de-Marne, in the Paris region, in a “
cosmopolitan atmosphere
” which he appreciated.
“
When I was 7, my best friend was a Central African boy whose family had fled the Bokassa regime.
I went to his house all the time and found his extended family fascinating.
“Initially, he intended to direct, like his father, a documentary filmmaker.
But the latter dissuades him.
He therefore turned to the philosophy of art, his hobby.
At the beginning of the 1980s, here he reveled in Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche at the Sorbonne, while having a rock group that flirted with the punk movement, Disorder style.
He often goes to London, drawn to ska, the mix of punk, rock and reggae - a scene that does not exist in Paris.
Gallery owner in Zimbabwe
At the time of his military service, he asks to leave in cooperation.
In 1987, he embarked for Harare, his first trip to the continent.
In Zimbabwe, he discovers a “
fairly British Africa, for me a double exoticism.
I had loincloths and wax in mind, and I found myself with people in costume drinking tea and playing golf
”.
The atmosphere, in these still fresh times of independence, is hopeful.
He discovers the existence of a very strong sculpture and painting movement, born in the 1960s, and wrongly presented as “shona sculpture”, one of the country's ethnic groups.
In reality, it all started with a meeting between Zimbabwean artists and Franck McEwen (1907-1994).
“
This British friend of Picasso, Matisse and Henry Moore was the first director of the National Gallery in 1957, where he started underground workshops for initiation into painting and sculpture.
A whole movement was born from this fusion, from these reciprocal influences which broke a century of apartheid.
"Olivier Sultan writes a book on this subject, then decides to stay after his two years of service, to set up a"
different
art gallery
, with a contemporary approach, unlike the shops offering supposedly ethnic totems, which the artists suffered from.
".
Thus was born in the early 1990s the Pierre Gallery, a name that pays tribute both to his late father and his newly born son, and to the material of the sculptures of Zimbabwe.
He learns Shona, which allows him to establish a completely different relationship with Zimbabweans, and finds that as a French, he is considered a "
UFO
" and sees doors open.
For a decade, he worked to showcase artists and their work, mainly to expatriates and foreign visitors.
A Museum of later arts in Paris
In 2000, everything changed.
"
Mugabe launches his pseudo-agrarian reform, a reappropriation of land by the ruling elite
" to counter the rise of the opposition, which is filling up with votes in the legislative elections.
The repression is set in motion, and political discussions become a taboo subject.
Even within his gallery, where he employed between five and six people.
“
People were afraid.
I did not want my three children to grow up in this leaden atmosphere.
I preferred to leave, reluctantly, rather than remain under a dictatorship that seemed to have stolen the enthusiasm of independence.
"
The rest is better known: Olivier Sultan opened a Museum of later arts in the 15th arrondissement, rue Mademoiselle, at the end of 2002. The time was controversial on the Quai Branly, under construction, then called “
Museum of primitive arts
”.
“
A euphemism for primitive, as if Africa was beyond history and time, and its artists lacked individuality.
This retrograde, almost racist and colonialist vision revolted me.
”Out of provocation, he chose the name of Musée des arts autochtones, a thumbs up at
Quai Branly
, and opened it with great pomp with names today in the firmament of contemporary African art: Bruce Clarke, Soly Cissé, Tchif, Barthélémy Toguo, Malick Sidibé, "a
whole group motivated to break the clichés about Africa
".
Again by provocation, the day of the inauguration of the Quai Branly, he opens an exhibition entitled
Des hommes sans histoire
, which deals with the restitution of African heritage as seen by contemporary artists.
►Also read: Ten years later, the Quai Branly museum strangely resembles Jacques Chirac
In 2005, his museum moved to the Marais, to be closer to the art market, but had to close in 2013, because the owner took over the premises.
Olivier Sultan is working on the development of a park of contemporary sculptures for the town hall of Saint-Ouen, before opening in 2017 the
Art-Z
gallery
near Bastille, in the 11th district.
“
Z for the last letter of the alphabet and Zimbabwe, my adopted country.
"
A new generation of artists in the making
In the midst of turbulence, like the others, due to the Covid-19 crisis, his gallery is going digital.
She remains faithful to her big names, while spotting the talents of the new generation, such as visual artists Evans Mbugua (Kenya) and Ndoye Douts (Senegal), or even photographers King Massassy (Mali) and Mabeye Deme (Senegal).
The latter, whose approach stems from an “intimate dialogue with Senegal” through photographs taken through a veil, will have a solo exhibition on November 5 at Art-Z, for a month.
Satisfied with having participated as a pioneer in the development of contemporary African art over the past twenty years, Olivier Sultan remembers the time when there were very few elected officials.
“
Ousmane Sow
or Chéri Samba were the trees that hid the forest, with thousands of strangers behind.
Today, young people are quickly making their mark, mastering the digital communication tools that are used for their promotion.
He notes "
fashion phenomena, such as very colorful portraits on motley backgrounds, with a purpose that is meant to be positive, whereas this is not an aesthetic criterion in art
", and currents of imitators, which copy elders or new stars who have developed their own writing, such as Omar Victor Diop.
►Also read: André Magnin: "Malick Sidibé is a monument of photography"
Olivier Sultan, who loves the writings of Doris Lessing, Fernando Pessoa and Sven Lindqvist, is about to publish a book of crossed looks based on ten years of conversations with the Malian photographer Malick Sidibé, who died in 2016. His dream?
“
Half live in Paris and half in an African country
”.
He would also like the artists he defends to be recognized without labels, and no longer as "
Africans
", "
a kind of purgatory from which one rarely leaves
".
He is delighted to see Julie Mehretu (Ethiopia), El Anatsui (Ghana) or Pascale Marthine Tayou (Cameroon), impose themselves internationally without their origin having any more importance.
“
When we talk about an African artist, it's not necessarily a bonus.
I hope that one day, the glass ceiling will be exceeded, which means that the biggest on the market, from the continent, always sell less than a Western artist
”.
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