Gadiaba Kodio (Short bio)
Artist / Designer / Photographer
“My legal name is Mohamed Kodio, and my stage name is Gadiaba Kodio. I’m self-taught so far. Even so, I manage to have fun and develop almost. All I have in mind. And what I generally have in mind is design and photography. In fact, I work a lot in local newspapers. Whether they are Malian, Senegalese, or French, American or otherwise, I manage to get by thanks to people’s everyday lives. I do value creation. Everyday materials. I give them a different image, change the way we see them,
gives them another use. What I do in photography is the same thing. I try to show real everyday life, the kind we Forget what already exists. Besides, my photographic work is based on what already exists.
Now, in design, my work tends a lot towards recycling and repurposing of objects. It’s about giving value to everyday objects. Our pots, our stoves, our old tables, radios, televisions, old fridges… Everything you could possibly have in the everyday appeals to me greatly because I think that somewhere, we can use a material until it is used to its fullest extent.
Kodio is a Malian artist and designer who repurposes everyday objects. As a child, he prefers the street to school, where he ventures into mountains of garbage to find treasures. Faced with his lack of interest in school, his parents sent him at the age of 15 to his grandmother, then a teacher in Sanankoroba. There he easily made friends with Canadians passing through via a twinning program. Through their contact, he acquires an openness of mind, cultivates his curiosity, and discovers a taste for travel and sharing.
Always eager to learn, he makes many connections and discovers that he can also make a living from his passions through art and recycling.
Metal, plastic, rubber and wood then become its raw materials for
to create furniture and decorative elements (lighting, sculptures, etc.) that distinguished by their originality.
Today Kodio lives in Dakar and is also a photographer. After working on
By engaging with the everyday objects that inhabit him, he becomes an observer of his environment.