When I paint, it is the literal translation of what I have experienced adapted to my daily life...I also focus on a precise subject at the pictorial level: capturing the spirit, the soul. I don't pretend to capture someone's soul but I want to. This is the only thing we have never managed to capture... I compose scenes in order to imagine my doubts, my fears, and put them in relation, to make them exist.
Dominique Zinkpè
A major figure of contemporary African art, a self-taught artist, Dominique Zinkpè was born in 1969 in Cotonou, Benin. He developed a passion for drawing at a very young age, and he began documenting his work at the library of the Centre Culturel Français where he discovered a new universe and opened up to the world. He exhibited for the first time at the Chinese Cultural Center in 1993 in Cotonou where he was awarded "the status of Artist" as he likes to say. The same year, he was selected to be part of the Beninese delegation at the Grapholies exhibition in Abidjan and received the Young African Talent Award! His meeting with Christian Lattier made him realize the importance of "developing a personal language and writing; I freed myself from too easy gestures and frills". Dominique Zinkpè's career is then launched and will progressively mark contemporary African creation through large and remarkable installations, such as his "Taxi-brousse" and a prolific production of drawings and paintings, which cross borders and continents!