DELPHINE DIALLO - GOD IS A WOMAN
by Terrence Phearse/ Musee
Delphine Diallo started this project after getting access to a wonderful New York collection of African artifacts during the COVID lockdown. While creations of African artists have been admired by the West for their formal power and beauty, she wants us to understand these works on their own terms. In this series, she focuses on female representation of artifacts that originate from multiple African traditions while creating a space for the transmission of ancestors knowledge in the present.
Terrence Phearse: Where did your inspiration for the Goddess project come about?
Delphine Diallo: It came about from being frustrated as a Black woman living in the Western world.
There is also a part where I haven’t felt reflected in having a model anywhere. I am biracial. My mom is white and my dad is Black. And then I started to discover a healing process in photography through Black female portraiture to be making this work. I had to study mythology worldwide all the way from India to African philosophy, Native American culture to South American. So through my journey of 10 years, I’ve really studied these mythologies and blended them within my new creation of Black goddesses. I look at it as an infinite interpretation.
TP: How important is the Female representation in your work?
DD: My work is about defeating the white male gaze. That is one of my strongest spiritual works. I practice spirituality for years and I practice yoga, mediation, Kung Fu, and martial arts. This moment was the first time I got a call to shoot the women that I had in my work. I didn’t make the decision to photograph them, they asked me to transform them into Goddesses. It’s not my photography transforming itself as a ritual. Each woman had the freedom to choose their pieces that best represented them. If you want to give, you need to change your relationship with your subjects. I’ve built a relationship with these subjects. I build trust, then I transcend them into a mythologic space where they become a story of my life as a movie. But it’s not a movie, its life itself. I do not want to repeat the male gaze. From an African narrative, we must have the power to create completely different forms of intention.
TP: How does double consciousness play a role in the way you make work?
DD: You have to create a new language. I am seeing my point of view. The point of view in a Western world but I travel to Senegal to have a point of view from my African sisters and my African culture. It is a place I did not grow up in that is in my DNA but there is a space for collective consciousness, African philosophy and understanding. I have white consciousness and Black consciousness and I am blending the form from a Western idea. From there I am trying to find space to deliver the form into the Black consciousness.
TP: How did you come up with God is a woman in your Goddess series?
DD: I am making a statement because we are born as a female in the world of men. If I am born in the world of man and you convince me that God is a man. I am taking the power to say the opposite so I am balancing the narrative. It doesn’t mean that my claim is the truth but I am just using this statement as a contradiction to have space to add women in the history of mankind.
TP: Are there any films that inspire you or get you going?
DD: I don’t really watch movies because of the limitations of the Black narrative. But one movie that I will say is Christopher Nolan’s Inception because the film takes on another level of consciousness that I think is important. The goal of the work is to awake everyone from the diaspora with an urge to create our own stories and to break into the narrative. The work that I am doing with God is a Woman is a part of a bigger journey as a Black woman.
TP: What do you want Black women to take from these portraits?
DD: I want Black women to want to be in these photographs. I want women to turn the pages of my book and feel that they have space to be here. They can take a transmission to feel integrity and feel elegant.
THE ORACLE, 2020
Series: God is a Woman
Delphine Diallo
SHANGO/YORUBA 2020
Series: God is a Woman
Delphine Diallo
SACREDNESS, 2020
Series: God is a Woman
Delphine Diallo
OSHUN YORUBA CROWN, 2020
Series: God is a Woman
Delphine Diallo
DIVINE, 2020
Series: God is a Woman
Delphine Diallo
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