Métamorphoses: Claudie Titty Dimbeng

MÉTAMORPHOSES

The Metamorphoses series is the result of an artist residency carried out at the École Supérieure des Arts Plastiques et du Design (ESAPAD) of the Institut National Supérieur des Arts et de l’Action Culturelle (INSAAC) in Abidjan, during July and August 2025.

I experienced this residency as a symbolic loop—an echo of my very first exhibition in Abidjan in 2013, of my childhood, of the recurring themes in my artistic research around spirituality and cultural heritage, and of Vohou-Vohou, one of the inspirations for my painting technique, Mixed Art Relief.

Indeed, the title of my first exhibition, Back to the Future, expressed my desire, from Paris where I live, to explore my roots in order to better understand where I come from—to build myself and move forward from that foundation. The INSAAC offered an environment that was both stimulating and deeply meaningful. Each day, I was greeted by a vast, perfectly trimmed lawn contrasting with tall trees and wild grasses—a sign of the powerful presence of nature at the origin of Akan spirituality.

The vibrations of the djembes played by students performing traditional dances brought me back to the dance classes I took in 1976 in that very same school, which at the time was also a cultural center known as INA (Institut National des Arts). Those classes were, for the child I was, a means of expression through the body, while the sound of the drums symbolized a return to the ancestral sources of my culture through the celebration of life’s milestones—today, by analogy, it echoes the stages of my artistic journey.

All of this resonated deeply within me, as it was in that very institution that the Vohou-Vohou movement was born—a movement of which I am considered a second-generation representative, according to Michel Micheau, curator of the Vohou-Vohou exhibition at the Saint-Merri Church in Paris (2014), where I exhibited alongside Kra N’Guessan and Youssouph Bath, two co-founders of the movement. According to Alicia Knock, Curator for Contemporary Creation and Foresight at the Centre Pompidou, my Mixed Art Relief practice clearly belongs to a post-Vohou period.

During this residency, my studio days were punctuated by exchanges with professors, artists, and students around the theme of my ongoing series and my creative process, which follows an aleatory principle. It is a process that begins with the emptiness of the canvas and evolves toward form, through constant adjustments, questioning, and transformation—a dialogue between my work and myself, leading to mutual growth.

This process culminates in the work itself—a metamorphosis, a change of form or structure following birth or emergence, echoing the biological principle that defines the very origin and essence of life. Each canvas becomes an evocation of the ineffable—the unspeakable reality of life, its chaos and becoming—interpreted through the lyricism of a visual narrative: the speakable, a link between the living and the ancestors, mirroring Akan spirituality.

This series represents thirteen metamorphoses that map the stages of a journey toward the self, culminating in the final painting, The Ultimate Metamorphosis: the capacity to desire that every instant of one’s life, down to its smallest detail, be repeated eternally. The Kômian, a priestess and mediator between the visible and invisible worlds, embodies this ultimate metamorphosis through the cyclical and memorial reactivation of the past—helping the community to accept and transcend its destiny by invoking spirits and ancestors.

This exhibition marks the culmination of a long-standing intellectual, conceptual, and artistic dialogue with my husband, Alain, who is not an artist but whose thought has been shaped by philosophical concepts. From this exchange emerged a collaborative work created “with four hands”: a series of performative photographs in which I stage myself for the first time. His external gaze, behind the lens, captures the moment when the tapa becomes a ritual skin, echoing funerary sculptures and weaving a symbolic bond between humanity, vegetation, and ancestry.

Finally, a pair of fictional ancestor portraits—created from original canvases digitally inverted into negatives—brings this journey to a close. These faceless visages, composed of veins and splashes, pay tribute to those whose image no longer exists, yet whose breath endures.

DIMBENG

Paris, November 2025