Alioune Diagne

This work has been kindly donated by the artist

Alioune Diagne is an artist based in France who works primarily in painting and drawing. He employs calligraphic marks, often within strict geometric shapes, to create schematized images of largely figurative subjects. The marks of the artist’s own devising become a personal iconography that overlays each image. Both the foreground and background of his paintings are rendered in this way, but the type of mark and scale of the shape differs, creating a contrast between the two. This is heightened by bright and luminous tones, which are often applied to the background, and more muted tones applied to the figures. Diagne describes this overall technique as ‘figuro-abstro’.

The subjects on which Diagne focuses are numerous but often connected to his personal experience of growing up in Senegal and the wider experience of African diasporic communities in Europe, where he is now based. His paintings are populated by figures in West African markets or moving through the urban environment of Dakar. In XALÉ TEY - Enfants d'aujourd'hui (2021), which translates into “kids of today” in English, Diagne depicts two children that he met in the street in Dakar. Posed as if caught by a camera, perhaps to circulate on social media, this image highlights the evolution of customs in Dakar as well as a sense of playfulness and comradery that can be detected between the two figures.