During a visit to a friend in Addis Ababa in 2000, I felt a mix of familiarity and strangeness. While the city had elements that resonated with my Western customs, it was also entirely different from anything I had experienced before. This trip to Ethiopia—the land of the Nile’s sources and rich in historical oddities, mysteries, and traditions—made me contemplate the possibility of moving abroad to live and work in a new, unexplored land.

The experience of moving to a new location and encountering different situations and people was going to be the driving force behind my own personal (self-inflicted) diaspora. Artists living in exile often strive to create art in search of their identity. Observing their surroundings with raw honesty, they reflect deeply, feel intensely, and seek connections within their new environments. The act of being present in an unfamiliar or barely-known society compels them to explore and identify familiar elements they can relate to or wish to connect with.

“Poésie, risque, amour. Un visage se répète en bouquets.”

René Creval

Bart D. is not a painter of individuals but a painter of presences. This choice is a form of resistance in a world increasingly dominated by external appearances, such as advertising, movies, and the internet.

In his work, Bart D. takes every opportunity to depict his figures not as fully articulated bodies, but rather as looming shapes. The human figure is portrayed in a way that expresses the feelings and emotions the artwork aims to convey. These representations are sufficient to embody abstract concepts such as love, war, folly, and fear.

While his paintings acknowledge that we live in a society of spectacle, they inevitably become mere appearances once displayed to the public or featured on a website.