DIMMA POULSEN Etiyé, sculpture, permanent artist of Galerie Capazza since 1996

From her African childhood, she keeps images of villages, sunsets and « lengthening silhouettes », a mix of images from Ethiopia - left at the age of 6 - Tanzania and Kenya where she lived until the age of 14 with her Danish family of adoption, before going to Denmark. When she arrives in France, eight years later, Etiyé discovers African art in Paris at the Museum of African and Oceanian Arts and at the Dapper Museum. If she agrees that the design of her sculptures may be inspired by “primitive art”, it is from Africa and Oceania, among others the aboriginal arts.

« My work has bonds with some African arts, but at the same time, it doesn’t mean anything. Slim shapes have always talked to me, they may be echoes to some childhood images, but you cannot link this work of form research to a culture or another. It is true that the cracked surface of my sculptures is closed to what you can find on the banco houses in Africa, the clay, dried and cracked by the sun, but it’s not a reason to call me African artist, it doesn’t mean anything!”

Rich of many lives, Etiyé Dimma Poulsen doesn’t want to be limited by a part of her life bond to an origin, a nationality or a function:

“Some wants to see me as Danish, others Ethiopian, others sculptor or even others as a ceramist, the panel is large, I have several families and each one corresponds to what I am.”