Boemo Diale met David Krut at the Turbine Art Fair in 2021, when the idea of undertaking an internship at the David Krut Workshop first surfaced. Boemo was curious to see how print could influence her practice, and it turns out the results were surprising. She is an artist and a student currently pursuing an Honours degree in Film and Television.
During and after her internship in 2022, Boemo created a number of unique monotype works using a mixture of oil- and water-based materials, as well as a linocut that became a varied edition. We have captured some thoughts from Boemo on her small but mighty body of prints.
On Symbols and Text:
I use these symbols in my paintings as markings, because essentially my works are centred around manifestations of new realities. And so, for example, some of them are Ghanaian symbols for fertility. I tend to rework them, and I here wanted to make it more playful and sort of childlike.
The concepts of ‘divine’ and ‘divide’ are related to the topic of manifestations and creating new realities, and they also relate to experiences of liminality and liminal spaces [see “Divine, but in Zig-Zag”].
On Process:
Mine is an intuitive, childlike process, I sometimes just do things off the top of my head. So this, I think, reflects it the most, the little house and the bone and the little dog [see “A New Playground”]. It’s the sort of things you would doodle, and I also like to play with how things translate. Just experimenting with the medium, which feels like a new playground – a new experience.
On her work “Dancing Vase”:
I was quite reluctant at first in the process (of linocut). I think it took me a while to finally get a shape, but each of them is unique because the idea was to create a stop motion animation of each of them, like dancing, which is why I call them the dancing vase. I use this figure often as a utilitarian sort of manifestation of women. These things that carry, hence the connection to vessels. My first works were about permaculture and of how this mutually beneficial environment exists for the farmer and the plants, but for woman or black woman, this society is not set up in that way. So, this would be a form of manifestation to carry a new reality.
On the Influence of Printmaking on her Practice:
I think it’s very temperamental, and I don’t know if I have the temperament for it. But I have such an appreciation for the patience, especially just seeing everyone in the workshop space, and they are so meticulous, and have the patience to do things properly. There is a kind of delayed gratification – instead of slapping paint onto a canvas, you have to go through steps and procedures. Which is, I think, what you have to do in filmmaking, and for me I’ve learnt about just delaying the end result to get something else, and planning as much as possible.
