The shadows cast by the African light shape his career. At the age of five, Saïdou Dicko, a young Fulani shepherd, painted the shadows of his goats and sheep on the sand of the Sahel in front of his feet. "I was a nomadic shepherd as a child," Dicko says at an exhibition opening at the Contour Gallery in Rotterdam. With his parents, siblings, sheep, goats and cattle, he used to roam the vastness of Burkina Faso, in the north of this West African country. Dicko was born in Déou in 1979. "At the age of nine, my family wanted me to move to an uncle in Ouagadougou to go to school." This change was quite a challenge, says Dicko. Ouagadougou (the capital of Burkina Faso with a population of 2.5 million) was a challenge. As a native nomad, he missed the Savanne, the free life of the Fulani under a wide sky.
 
The shadow plays and silhouettes of the animals and people of the Sahel, however, this long echo from his childhood, form the foundation of an international career as a visual artist. That is one constant. The other: "I taught myself everything," says the 44-year-old. Saïdou Dicko, the self-taught artist, uses photography, video and digital composition for his artistic expression in addition to painting (with oils and watercolours). Dicko's works have been shown at photo festivals, art fairs and galleries in Addis Ababa, Bamako, Casablanca, Dakar, Johannesburg, Lisbon and London.