The Gamble
Art wasn't natural for me.
In 2018, African masks dragged me in and flipped my world. That obsession burned through money, sleep, and relationships. At the time I was freelancing as an event photographer, drowning in edits, good at composition but clueless about how to make an image breathe.
My family didn't get it. Friends were settling into stable jobs while I gambled everything on art.
That gamble hardened me.
No Faces
Masks taught me that meaning doesn't need faces. They speak through form, gesture, and presence.
My figures follow that rule. By removing the face, I shift attention elsewhere: posture, shape, tension, and symbolism. The work invites viewers to project their own reading onto the image rather than inherit mine.
Projects like Kpeliye'e, rooted in Senufo mask traditions, pushed me to question identity and performance. Chromatic Dilemma emerged from a darker period of fragmentation and uncertainty, jumping between ideas and directions without knowing what would hold.
Much of my process happens through breaking images apart in Photoshop. Distortion, especially through Liquify, has become part of the language. Sometimes a single adjustment can completely transform a piece.
I'm still chasing those transformations.