Fatim Soumaré

Fatim SOUMARE lives and worksin Sine Saloum, Senegal.
She grew up in Dakar where she learned about traditional West African textile crafts from
her mother, a dyer specializing in «thioup» fabrics (Senegalese tradition of hand-dyeing).
She moved to Paris at the age of 20.
Her passion for fashion history lead her to the world of the Parisian theater scene where
she worked as a costume designer from 2016 to 2017 under the pseudonym Safraou in
parallel to a career in finance.
In 2020, she transitioned to a self-taught artisan, weaver and designer and returned to
live in Senegal.
She reintroduced the traditional know-how of handmade cotton thread held by the
women of the Serer community, the Falé, into African textile crafts.
She nourishes her artistic approach in her pursuit of revalorization and preservation of
the Fale tradition. Fatim created a collective of 200 women spinners in five
villages of the Sine Saloum and set up her own weaving and clothing workshop.
In 2021, she created her own label with the same name: Falé

Submitted by Galerie Atiss Dakar