ART BASEL MIAMI 2026

For its debut in Art Basel Miami Beach, Galerie PERSON is pleased to present a solo exhibition dedicated to Mamadou Cissé, bringing together a selection of works that immerse viewers in the artist’s singular visual universe. This presentation reflects the gallery’s commitment to supporting distinctive artistic voices from Africa and its diaspora and bringing them into an international dialogue.

Born in Senegal and based in France, Mamadou Cissé is a self-taught artist whose practice emerged from an unusual personal experience. While working as a night security guard, he began drawing as a way to remain awake during his shifts. Over time, this spontaneous practice developed into a remarkable body of work centered on imaginary cities, establishing a highly recognizable visual language at the crossroads of drawing, cartography, architecture and urban planning.

Seen from an aerial perspective, Cissé’s cities unfold through dense networks of buildings, roads, bridges and infrastructures. Entirely fictional yet meticulously structured, these urban landscapes appear to function according to their own internal logic. Rather than reproducing existing places, Cissé uses drawing to imagine alternative ways of organizing and inhabiting space. The precision of his compositions contrasts with the freedom of their conception: perspective, scale and geography are reinvented, transforming the city into a territory for speculation and imagination. From a distance, his works reveal vast metropolitan structures; viewed closely, they open onto an extraordinary accumulation of details, inviting the viewer to navigate them as one would explore an unknown territory.

Cissé’s work has received significant institutional recognition. Six of his works are held in the collection of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, and his distinctive visual language has also led to a collaboration with Hermès. By dedicating its inaugural presentation at Art Basel Miami Beach entirely to Mamadou Cissé,

Galerie PERSON highlights the depth and singularity of a practice developed over many years, in which drawing becomes not simply a means of representing the world as it exists, but a space in which to imagine what it might become.

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