Idiatou Lily Diallo

VIRTUAL TOUR

I buried myself with you

My fourth-year body of work is inspired by a conversation I had with my mother. As a very spiritual woman, she often tells me about her dreams, her prayers and any prophetic words she has for me. A few months ago, she told me something over the phone that stuck with me. She said: “when we buried your father, I think you buried yourself with him.” She explained to me that she’d had a prophetic dream where she saw life through my eyes, moving around Cape Town, going through my daily routines and experiencing life as I have for the past two years. She told me her vision was clouded by a veil, that she feels I had been seeing and living through a veil since the passing of my father, and that within this final project, I would remove that veil through my exploration of grief and trauma within my artistic practice.

My body of work makes use of this prophetic dream as the driving force behind my conceptualization, in an attempt to lift that veil, and identify myself in a world that has changed, but also a world where I have now changed. Who am I after losing my father? I have created a veil that represents the one that my mother spoke of, a wall full of photos and text, and two large self portraits. All of these explore and represent my identity encompassing my past, my present, my heritage and my grief.