By Florine Demosthene

I chronicled my journey through West Africa in a series of drawings entitled The Capture. These mix media pieces, textual mélanges of ink, oil, graphite and charcoal, depict voluptuous female figures amid a strange world of decay and destruction. The Capture was the initial phase to constructing a non-typical black heroine persona. By delving into the subconscious mind of a fictitious black heroine and the ephemeral quality of her thoughts and experiences, The Capture was an attempt to structure a new mythology that explores black female sexuality and sensuality.

The most recent works, The Burst, moves within the internal search of the heroine. The figures are depicted in dream-like spaces, where the main protagonist entertains a multitude of emotions and genres, bursting forth with new possibilities and ways of exploring herself, both physically and sexually. This series is a dichotomy of possibilities, intertwining seductive nuances while simultaneously playing with viewer’s thoughts.