FLORA, FAUNA AND FORMS

DELPHINO DIALLO
New York | 2019

Flora, Fauna and Forms was a solo exhibition by Delphine Diallo that transformed the Quin lobby into a space of contemplation incorporating several of the artist’s recent works of female portraiture, mixed media collage, landscape and still life photo.  Viewers discovered works that expand popular perception beyond Diallo’s renown female portraiture, introducing a vernacular of pastoral landscape and composite works of flora and fauna from Thailand, Montana, and Mongolia.  Collage literally and metaphorically enwraps select works simultaneously augmenting the medium while serving to bring forth newfound context and meaning through iterative juxtaposition. The selected grouping acts as a focused continuation of Diallo’s ongoing investigations into the anthropological, mythological, philosophical, and spiritual where narrative potential of her images is highlighted amidst the subject’s costume, surround or ornamentation.  Through her work, subjects are connected across distances, ages, and cultures, envisaging a unified power.  

Accompanying the exhibition was a video of the artist’s collage process by filmmaker Marissa Kaiser. Ianniello states, “I chose to curate an exhibit that explores female figures as one-of-a kind art, divorced from traditional gaze; not just nudity or simple portraiture, but pure and raw forms of art and energy combined.”

Collage literally and metaphorically enwraps select works simultaneously augmenting the medium while serving to bring forth newfound context and meaning through iterative juxtaposition. The selected grouping acts as a focused continuation of Diallo’s ongoing investigations into the anthropological, mythological, philosophical, and spiritual where narrative potential of her images is highlighted amidst the subject’s costume, surround or ornamentation.  Through her work, subjects are connected across distances, ages, and cultures, envisaging a unified power.

About the Artist

Delphine Diallo is a Brooklyn-based French and Senegalese visual artist and photographer. She graduated from the Académie Charpentier School of Visual Art in Paris in 1999 before working in the music industry for seven years as a special effect motion artist, video editor and graphic designer. In 2008, she moved to New York to explore her own practice after giving up a corporate Art Director role in Paris. Acclaimed photographer and artist Peter Beard who was impressed by her creativity and spontaneity, which lead to their collaboration for the 2009 Pirelli calendar photo shoot in Botswana, mentored Diallo. Inspired by new environments on this trip, she decided to return to her father's home city of Saint-Louis in Senegal to start her own vision quest.