“My art is contextual. My painting, initially abstract, has become figurative. The hectic world news, and the Black Live Matter events, comfort me in the representation of self-portraits and portraits of the unseen. My art frees itself and asserts itself.”

 

Didier Viodé was born in 1979 in Ivory Coast to parents from Benin. He is a painter, photographer, videographer and cartoonist. He currently works and lives in France. He was trained at the Institut National Supérieur de l'Art in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, then at the Beaux-Arts in Besançon, France. 

 

Viodé has worked on themes related to migration as well as the recent lockdown. His recent series "auto-portrait d'un confiné" was presented at Piasa auction house in Paris in 2020. Several of his works have been acquired by the Fondation Gandur in Geneva. His work was recently on show at 1:54 art fair in London and Paris and at Marianne Boesky gallery in New York, curated by Amoako Boafo. Gbèto was his first solo in Switzerland.

 

He was influenced by the Fluxus movement and uses ordinary materials in his work such as cardboard, plastic, jute fabric and old newspapers. His inspiration comes from his condition, society, street and popular culture, politics and the media. He observes then paints, photographs and films his daily existence. By placing humankind at the center of his oeuvre, he aims to inspire each of us to look at the world through art.

 

Read our interview in FR with Didier Viodé for The Debrief here