Etiyé in her own words ...

 

"I always strive to shape or represent figures in their primary essence– beings in their most primitive and denuded surroundings, symbols of their fundamental Existential condition : Solitude, Fear and Desire.

Above all else, being, being there, being a part of and belonging to….encouraging this primordial presence, a trace of human culture on earth. Each figure is a trace rather than a portrait, which is why I favour seeing my statues together – forming a community, a group of totems – like a forest…

To make, to create, is for me an ongoing process, a flowing river. I wish to communicate a joie de vivre, a creative joy. Even though this joie de vivre is, by definition, transitory and ephemeral, Art should be able to freeze frame this joy as an everlasting moment. I can say that I would hope my statues reflect an ecstasy transformed into the material world.

It is always for me a magical moment : the fusion of two materials – earth and fire. I might say that I uncover each new creature as it emerges from the ashes of the oven. There is a kind of culinary parallel , placing in the oven and watching the evolution of the colours through natural chemical processes... this is my passion, my personal art, which gives me life, and, to my mind, firing in the oven is one of Man’s most vital activities.
This most traditional approach of hand-moulding is at the very heart of my work. I do not mean by that, that I attempt to copy traditional statues or follow what might be called ‘tribal’ styles ; I feel rather that I re-invent ‘archetypes’ from a ‘primitive art’ pool, which you could call ‘totems’.
I shape the material using methods evolved through experimentation, memory and an ill-defined nostalgia for my love of a continent I left many years ago – African soil….though my work is not uniquely African in inspiration. On closer inspection you can identify elements of Ancient Greek (Mycenaean) Art, prehistoric Venuses and Oriental Art. "

Etiyé Dimma Poulsen

 

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