INFUSING LIFE - exhibition on view from 31 October to 20 December 2025
Opening in the presence of the artists: 30 October 6pm to 8pm
Guided tour by the artists: 1st November at 4pm
Setonou Djedatin (born 1994, Benin) and Elsa Åkesson (born 1996, Madagascar), two young artists with very different backgrounds, nevertheless come together in a creative process that allows emotions to emerge spontaneously and celebrates both the essence of life and a feminine connection to their communities of origin.
For Setonou Djedatin, free forms and scenes unfold like dreams, deeply rooted in Beninese spiritual heritage and her experience as an African female artist. For Elsa, the search for intense purity in the innocent moments of childhood, with clean lines and shapes inspired by realism that convey the joy of fleeting everyday life and her emotional attachment to Madagascar.
The two artists use profoundly different pictorial techniques to introduce us to their worlds. Setonou Djedatin's symbolism-laden canvases plunge us into a whirlwind of bright colors from which emerge emotional experiences and portraits sometimes linked to voodoo divination practices, which are very present in Benin. Her intuitive works resonate with universal questions about identity, belonging, and the status of women. From Abomey, her hometown and the former historic capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey, which dominated the region for several centuries, Setonou Djedatin draws strength to evoke lives and ancestral memories, somewhere between nostalgia and a futuristic vision.
Elsa Åkesson takes an almost photographic look at intimate scenes from everyday life, revealing a gentle way of life and intense brightness. The clean, cubic shapes open up meditative spaces that aim to plunge us back into the free space of childhood. The effect is an immediate feeling of raw, unfiltered joy. Elsa constantly explores the life force of childhood and the meaning of family, but also our relationship to joy and gratitude. Her raw rosewood frames 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 inspiration from it on a daily basis through her travels 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—or rather lives—the power of the divine and Mother Nature.
In collaboration with
