PENDA DIAKITÉ

Band of Vices (Los Angeles, CA) is pleased to announce an international collaboration, bringing West Africa & South Africa together in one exhibition, Mousso-Ya, honoring Womanhood...   

Currently based in Los Angeles, Penda Diakité  is a Swiss-Mali contemporary artist who grew up between Mali, West  Africa and Portland, Oregon. She has followed the lead of master collage  artists such as Romare Bearden, Wangechi Mutu & Chelle Barbour in  terms of using the medium in order to express her deep admiration and  emotional connection to showing her people in a more expansive,  distinctive and influential light.  Her collages are about giving agency  to her subjects as she empowers them with beautiful emotion, lyricism  and purpose. Her figures are strong, bold examples of portraits of Black  females. Penda's strive for equality and fairer representation in the  art world is timely and shows her dedication to societal advancement.

In  2018, she was awarded the “Dean Collection 20” grant from Swizz Beatz,  founder of The Dean Collection, along with his wife Alicia Keys, with  which she had her solo exhibition Made In America. Penda graduated from the California Institute of the Arts with a BFA in Film/Video and a minor in Cultural Studies.

In our gallery annex, you will discover the works of Leila Rose Fanner.  Currently living in South Africa, Leila is known for her figurative and  non-figurative artwork, which is distinguished by her use of dark or  silhouetted figures, prolific patterning, bold color and South African florals. Her process is intuitive and having been raised in a family of  women, displays a distinctly feminine perspective.