2007 Portfolio Prize Runner Up: Delphine Diallo

In 2005, Delphine Diallo traveled to St. Louis, the capital of Senegal, in search of her family heritage. Born in Paris to Senegalese and French parents, Diallo undertook the Magic Photo Studio series as a way of exploring the cultural identity of her family and of pushing herself as an artist. 

The series is inspired in large part by the work of Malick Sidibé, who ran a studio in Bamako, Mali, during the 1960s, producing earnest, straightforward portraits in whimsically painted glass frames, for which he recently received the Venice Biennale Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. In her work, Diallo compresses pattern and image into a single composition; patterns extracted from the textiles, totemic animals, and plants are brought directly into the image itself and layered on top of the portraits. These techniques are drawn from her background as a graphic designer and illustrator. 

The alchemical mix of painting, sketching, and notation on top of the images also connects the work to a contemporary vein of graphic-novel and graffiti-influenced drawing in the manner of Zak Smith or Margaret Kilgallen. The result is a richly textured and deeply personalized approach to portraiture.

Delphine Diallo was born in 1977, in Paris, to French and Senegalese parents. After graduating with distinction from the Académie Charpentier School of Visual Art in 1999, she worked as a designer and animator for a number of clients in the music industry, including Coldplay, the Smashing Pumpkins, and Manu Chao. In the last year she moved to New York City, where she works as a freelance graphic artist. She recently had her first show in Brooklyn.