Dramane Diarra (Mali, 1998)

Born in 1998, Dramane Diarra lives and works in Bamako. He graduated from the Balla Fasséké Kouyaté Conservatory of Arts and Multimedia in Bamako in 2019. Passionate about drawing and painting since childhood, Diarra taught himself by imitating the great classical painters of art history, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, William Adolphe Bougeurau, and the French naturalist Léon L'Hermitte. But it wasn’t until he discovered the work of Belgian surrealist René Magritte, that his visual research also became essentially surrealist.

Growing up in nature among the many mango trees producing fruit which his mother would sell on the streets, Diarra saw entire patches of forest disappear of his lifetime.

Today, in order to further explore the intimate and poetic relationship between contemporary and globalized human beings with nature, Dramane Diarra elected to represent gardens. In his gardens, young men and women dream impossible dreams, actors of imaginary role play in an increasingly dystopian world. The protagonists of the artist’s universe are both human and machine, looking for ways to escape the inevitable dehumanization that comes with scientific evolution. To help them in their imaginary quest, Diarra fills his garden with elements that pertain to spirituality, ancestry, heritage and his own history.

DRAMANE DIARRA

1998

MALI

The Great Garden

2025

Acrylic on Canvas

150 x 200 cm