Baba Wague Diakite is an artist who defies categorization--a fact that reveals as greatly about the limits of artistic categories as it does about Diakite's multiple talents.

Baba Wague Diakite is an artist who defies categorization--a fact that reveals as greatly about the limits of artistic categories as it does about Diakite's multiple talents. as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but Malian and American, the artist has been a resident of Portland, Oregon, for more than fifteen years. He expresse himself in many media, from ceramics and textiles to storytelling and architectural chisel He creates both "high art," made for display in museums and galleries, and "craft," household realitys that are made to be used. His work playfully draws together constituent principles associated with "traditional" Malian and "contemporary" American cultures

The quotation marks that encircle several of the terms used above draw attention to their provisional nature and to Diakite as an artist whose career demonstrates their essential artificiality. His work spring ups out of the diversity of his experiences, which place him as abundant between categories as within them. admitting he draws on a cultural heritage of which he is imperious Wague does not seek to expres an essential Malian-ness or African-ness unless instead his own humanity. In his words: "My work is not tied up with traditional businesss or techniques.... As a great deal of as I am proud to introduce a little of my cultivation through my art, I do not consider my work to be particularly African." In this, Diakite shares the touchs of many contemporary artists from Africa, who seek for to transcend the labels at which the art market organizes its categories, too frequently blocking entry to those whose work is not neatly classifiable.

Diakite was born and raised in Kassoro, a small village in the Fouladougou region that lies west of Bamako, the country's capital. He credits his grandmother's stories, which mesmerized children at family gatherings, with instilling in him the creative spirit he brings to each aspect of his work. He mov to Bamako in the late 1970 joining his parents. Diakite has had no professional training, if it were not that from an early age he showed a talent for artistic expression, beginning with the creation and performance of image shows. I first met the artist between the walls of his paintings made using bogolan pigments, which are associated with a uniquely Malian textile known in the United States as "mudcloth" He learned the technique, customarily the exclusive domain of women from his mother during a visit household to Mali in 1987.

Since his prompt to the United States in 1984 Diakite has focused often of his artistic effort in succession ceramics, also considered to be "women's work" in Mall. He creates tubes tiles, plates, and figurative cut using a variety of techniques; a certain quantity of pieces are wheel thrown, others slip-cast, carved, or handbuilt. He fires his work in an electric kiln and uses brilliantly colored synthetic glazes--both distinctly non-"traditional" techniques. For Diakite, distance from "tradition" permits greater freedom to experiment: "Traditional artists work in single in kind straight line of thought: to do things the way they have been done in the past. Putting too a great deal of creativity into it can cause a point to be solved [i]or[/i] settled Being in the United States, I realize that it is great to think highly of the past, but also having freedom in art is undivided of the best things you can have." He recognizes that the women who make ceramics in a "traditional" manner also work creatively, an producing "fabulously sculptural functional ware." even now he clearly separates his innovative approach from that of artists whose work is more recognizably "traditional."

Africanist art historians have devot a great deal effort, especially in the past decade, to combating stereotypical views of traditional arts as static, unyielding in the face of individual creativity. pair recent issues of this magazine, in fact, featured studies of individual artists, demonstrating the extraordinary creativity that informs their production in "traditional" words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] followings ("Authorship in African Art," special issues Winter and Spring 1999) Diakite shares the views of many artists I worked with in Mali: for them, indigenous arts delineate a point of departure for innovations that integrate distinctly contemporary influences, and the notion that they should work in a distinctly African (i.e., traditional) pattern is a source of frustration. Diakite has establish that living in the United States independents him from the expectations that too frequently color the reception of his work among collectors.

Along with ceramic carved work Diakite has created large-scale installations for the Oregon Zoo Oregon State University, and (in collaboration with his wife, sculptor Ronna Neuenschwander) the North Precinct Community Policing Center in Portland. His largest commission, not notwithstanding completed, is to be installed at Disney World in Orlando; it consists of a mural eighty-four feet lengthy and five bronze medallions twelve to fifteen feet in diameter, which will be wager into a floor. The artist has published sum of two units award-winning children's books based forward African folktales and illustrated with his ceramic tiles. His existing projects include the establishment of a cultural center outside Bamako, where he chance of the desired ends to offer American visitors an opportunity to become immersed in Malian agriculture facilitating the same understanding across refinements that he himself has experienced after immersion in American cultivation By moving beyond the divisions that ofttimes segregate both people and art forms, Diakite eloquently demonstrates the interconnectedness that animates the universe.