Setonou Djedatin (b. 1995, Benin) and Elsa Åkesson (b. 1996, Madagascar) are two young artists with very distinct paths, who come together in a creative process that allows emotions to spontaneously emerge and celebrates both the essence of life and a feminine grounding in their communities of origin. 

Setonou Djedatin gives free rein to fluid forms and dreamlike scenes, deeply rooted in the spiritual heritage of Benin and her experience as an African woman artist. Elsa Åkesson seeks intense purity in the innocent moments of childhood, using realistic-inspired lines and shapes that convey the fleeting joy of everyday life and her emotional attachment to Madagascar. 

Infusing life – or connecting to life forces

The two artists use profoundly contrasting pictorial techniques to introduce us to their intimate worlds. Setonou Djedatin’s symbolically rich canvases immerse us in a whirlwind of vivid colors from which emotional experiences and portraits emerge, sometimes linked to the vodoun divinatory practices that are prevalent in Benin. Her intuitive works resonate with universal questions about identity, belonging, and the condition of women. From Abomey, her hometown and the historic capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey, which dominated the region for centuries, Setonou Djedatin draws strength to evoke ancestral memories, between nostalgia and futuristic vision. 

Elsa Åkesson, on the other hand, casts an almost photographic gaze on intimate everyday scenes, from which contentment of life and strong luminosity emerge. The cubic, clean shapes open meditative spaces that aim to plunge us back into the free space of childhood. The effect is an immediate feeling of raw, unfiltered joy. The artist constantly explores the life force of childhood and the meaning of family, as well as our relationship to joy and gratitude. Her frames, made of raw rosewood from Madagascar, connect her works to her native land, also known as “the red island,” which is said to be a divine creation. The artist draws daily inspiration from it throughout her journeys as a cosmopolitan young woman and her entrepreneurial and associative projects. 

This exhibition, co-curated by Mona Brulhart and Charlotte Diez-Bento, offers an ode to life and the power of optimism in a troubled world, through the testimony of two young African women artists connected to the essential values of existence: life, the divine, and Mother Nature.

Gallery Brulhart - 21 rue des vollandes, 1207 Geneva - Opening on 30 October from 18.00 -