A conversation with Delphine Diallo

season 1 episode 1
Mar 08 2019

Delphine Diallo, Brooklyn-based French and Senegalese artist, discusses “feminine energy,” its influence on her art, and why it’s relevant to our lives today. 

About our guest
Delphine Diallo is a Brooklyn-based French and Senegalese visual artist and photographer, focused on exploring women’s relationships with their innate, transformative feminine power. Through her provocative visuals, Diallo seeks to combine artistry with activism, empowering women, youth, and cultural minorities.

Links

Website
Instagram
Facebook

I Am Love, by Delphine Diallo


Interpretation of a Dream, by Delphine Diallo

“We need—inside of ourselves—to be grateful for having the privilege to be the generation who can change the world. That generation of women who will be together, gather together”

In this episode of Raw and Radical, Mauren welcomes Delphine Diallo, who worked in the music industry as a special effects artist, video editor, and graphic designer for several years before moving to New York in 2008 to start a career as an independent artist.

Delphine is particularly drawn to women as subjects, exploring how they relate to and express their feminine vitality and force through her portraiture and collage work. She first became aware of her own feminine energy a decade ago, as it manifested in a strong urge to create artwork. She quickly realized, however, that she couldn’t maintain her creative flow and needed to connect with her feminine force on a deeper level to consistently create meaningful work.

“At the beginning of my career, like, I was not strong enough for my energy,” she says. “Literally! Like my energy was boiling in me, and I was like ‘Oh my god, like, how am I going to deal with this in the long-term!’”

Delphine explains how practicing kung-fu and using Eastern philosophical approaches helped her build self-discipline and understand how energy manifests and flows through the body.

Delphine and Mauren also discuss how the ability to believe in yourself is not passed down through the family or taught in the mainstream educational system. As a result of her unique career path, Delphine has been forced to develop a strong belief in her own power and ability to accomplish her goals. However, she also believes that more and more women are beginning to see that they do not have to give up their dreams, as the established narrative that women cook, clean, and tend to the needs of their masculine partners has begun shifting.

Delphine also shares how she dives deeper into her own creative process by using discomfort as a catalyst for fueling her creative energy, and how she learned that surrounding yourself with community is vital to continued growth, creativity, and success.

She says, “We need—inside of ourselves—to be grateful for having the privilege to be the generation who can change the world. That generation of women who will be together, gather together, and… and be grateful for life itself, waking up the next day in the morning… Success is the togetherness of a community system—which is the vital force of every being extending to taking care of the planet… The healing will come through feminine energy, to be able to finally heal the planet.”

Eva Armisén

Artist and painter

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