MFA Painting, Room 300H

@ztheratt

“Phantadelphia (the desire is vast and boundless)",” 59” x 70” , Acrylic on velvet

Diomande’s is centered around creating universes and environments that reflect opposing themes. These expansive spaces express more than one feeling at a time. Their starting point is the idea of a dual identity: not being fully settled in one place or the other. Working with the idea of dual identity connotes displacement, constantly feeling out of place except in the worlds she creates; both in a psychological and spatial sense, feeling like not fully belonging to one place or the other. The ritualistic component that is depicted in the movement in her backgrounds, the visual components of that very same movement and gesture is an homage to the non-linearity of the stories of the people around them as well as her own story. Weaving pieces of her life to make sense of it. As of late they have been exploring the idea of Magical realism, a literary style that also extends to visual arts, which is the idea of taking the supernatural and making it ordinary. Through the language of mixed media and drippy paint they try to create environments where formal strategies collide and lure the viewer into these unknown territories.