Cheikh Ndiaye was born in 1970 in Dakar, he lives and works in New York and Dakar.
Cheikh Ndiaye graduated from the National School of fine Arts in Dakar and the School of Fine Arts in Lyon, France. The artist is particularly interested in architecture and urbanism. Composed of paintings, photography, and installations, his body of work is guided by a gaze, singular to the informal, which is the base of his artwork. Retrieved from a lethal state, obsolete objects are brought back to life. The objects return to their material plenitude and are project into a renewed imaginary.
Cheikh Ndiaye has participated in numerous exhibitions across Africa and Europe namely Hippocampus at La Maréchalerie in Versailles in 2017, Qu’il est loin mon pays at Fondation Blachère in Apt, France in 2016, and the same year, Galerie Cécile Fakhoury dedicated Faire de la rue un salon d’extérieur (From the street to an outdoor living room), his second solo show in Abidjan, to him.
His work became part of the permanent collections of the Kadist Art Foundation and Centre Pompidou Paris, where it was presented in the summer exhibition Figures. Cheikh Ndiaye also presented the installation Privatisation d’un espace par son ciel at Kër Thiossane in the exhibition Contours as part of Afropixel #5 Festival, in the frame of the 12th Dakar Biennale.
In 2015, his installation Blancheur rigide dérisoire en opposition au ciel was presented in the international exhibition of the 56th Venice Biennale, All the World’s Futures, curated by Okwui Enwezor. In 2014, his work was shown at Centre de Photographie, Geneva, Switzerland, in the collective exhibition Against the grain : la photographie à contre-courant. In 2013, his work was featured in a solo exhibition, (In)formal Visitation at Galerie Cécile Fakhoury – Abidjan, and in the exhibition Cinémas Africa at Musée Africain de Lyon, France in 2012. His work was part of the international selection of Dakar Biennale 2012 and was presented at Galerie Le Manège, Dakar in 2010.
Cheikh Ndiaye won the Natulis Art Temporary prize in Berlin, Germany in 2012 and the Linossier prize in France in 2008.