<Homepage> House of Culture Tintinto


Art Space Collection / Maren Sanneh / Biography




Maren Sanneh was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1958. She studied fine art at Hochule für bildende Künste Hamburg from 1979 to 84, years marked by an early search for form and rhythm, and a language beyond the visible.

In 1984 she moved to Basel, where she co-founded the artist group MALOLA together with Christian Schaffner. Their collaborative practice unfolded between music and conceptual art, often resisting fixed categories, leaning instead towards process, sound and the ephemeral. In 1992, they were awarded a studio residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris — a period of intensified exchange, where the city's density of histories and voices became part of their ongoing dialogue.

Back in Basel they pursued further studies at the University of Basel. Sanneh focused on English literature and ethnology — fields that deepened her sensitivity to narrative, cultural translation, and the layered textures of meaning. Residencies in Australia (1996) and South Africa (2002) extended this inquiry into different landscapes and social realities, leaving traces that would later resurface in her work.

MALOLA's exhibitions have appeared intermittently, almost deliberately so; solo shows in Hamburg (1989) and after Basel (1999, 2008), alongside music performances and group exhibitions in Paris, Perth and Johannesburg. Since 2003 their work shifted to wall-based works, which are extensively documented on their website www.malola.net, forming an archive that is both precise and open-ended..

In 2015, the exhibition at Skulpturhalle Basel marked a conscious farewell to a certain chapter. For nearly three decades, alongside her artistic practice, Sanneh had worked at Antikenmuseum Basel (1987-2016), navigating between the preservation of ancient art and her own contemporary explorations.

In 2016 she left Europe and moved to The Gambia in Westafrica. The shift was not only geographical but existential: a reorientation towards a different rhythm of life, light and attention. In 2019 she founded the House of Culture Tintinto, conceived as a space for encounter, exchange, and artistic presence.