Soimadou Ibrahim

Soimadou Ibrahim was born in 1989 in Paris, France. He spent his early childhood in Itsinkoudi, a village in the Comoros archipelago, before returning to France at around age ten. He trained in graphic design, earning a BA in Graphic Design and Digital Art from Universite Rennes 2 in 2014 and an MA in Graphic Design and Art Direction from Campus Fonderie de l'Image in Paris in 2016. He worked in graphic design and art direction before turning to painting as a full-time practice around 2021. He now lives and works in London.

His paintings revisit cherished family moments and domestic interiors, often featuring plants, to explore memory, postcolonial identity, and connection across generations and geography. He held an unusually concentrated run of solo exhibitions in 2021, including shows at SFA Advisory and ATM Gallery in New York, Bill Brady Gallery in Los Angeles, and Kotaro Nukaga in Tokyo. Further solo exhibitions followed at Bill Brady Gallery in Miami (2022 to 2023) and WOAW Gallery in Hong Kong (2023), and he took part in a residency and exhibition at dot.ateliers in Accra, Ghana, in 2024.

Coverage of Ibrahim to date is largely descriptive gallery and trade press rather than signed critical review. Artnet's Buyers' Guide, WOAW Gallery, Kotaro Nukaga, and the design and culture outlet Hypeart have all profiled his exhibitions, most recently his 2023 Hong Kong show "In Deeds and Gestures." Writers consistently frame his work around family memory, domestic scenes, and the imprint of his Comorian and French upbringing, but no substantial, exactly quotable critical assessment from a named critic at a major outlet has surfaced in available sources.

Public auction data for Ibrahim is limited. Price databases, including Artsy and Art.Salon, list about six recorded auction results under the name Soimadou Ali Ibrahim, the form of his name typically used in auction and price databases, as distinct from Soimadou Ibrahim, the name used by his galleries and in editorial coverage. The highest confirmed public sale price is USD 107,100, for the painting Relax and take notes, sold at Phillips in New York in November 2021, though the exact day of that sale is not specified in available public records. A second work, Potemkine, sold for USD 47,880 at Phillips, though the exact sale date and location could not be confirmed. Other recorded sales, including works at Phillips New York and Phillips Hong Kong in 2023 and 2024, have been at substantially lower prices. Given the small number of recorded sales, the current record should be treated as an early data point rather than an established market benchmark.

Ibrahim is early in his market. No catalogue raisonne exists and no certificate-of-authenticity program has been documented, so any acquisition should be checked directly with galleries that have presented his solo exhibitions, including WOAW Gallery, Galerie Marguo, and Kotaro Nukaga. His auction history is limited to a small number of recorded sales, headlined by a single USD 107,100 result at Phillips in 2021, and collectors should treat this as an early, thin data point rather than an established price history. His professional identity appears under two related name forms: Soimadou Ibrahim in galleries and press, and Soimadou Ali Ibrahim in auction and price databases, both referring to the same artist.