Collection: Moustapha Dimé

The son of an accountant, Moustapha Dimé (1952 Louga, Senegal - 1998 Saint-Louis, Senegal) was drawn to woodworking early, enrolling at the age of fourteen in a Dakar training program for artisans, whe he spent three years. After working in Gambia and Ghana, gaining skill but struggling to make a living, he finally returned to Senegal, where he received a scholarship to Dakar's Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Asked bt Thomas McEvilley, in 1993, about his sense of his talent before entering the school, he replied, "I had someting in my hands. I knew how to do things before knowing what they were going to be... . I didn't yet understand what art was at that time, but I had an ability that allowed me to start anyway." Entering the school a skilled artisan, he left a year with a new self-awareness as a fine artist. 

Dimé also told McEvilley about "vomiting acculturation" - rejecting outside influences and embracing the techniques and visual language of African sculpture, but in a nontraditional way. His formal studies had sharpened his identity as an African artist, partly in reaction to his European teachers. He dedicated himself to carving with the adze, the traditional tool of the African sculptor. 

Dimé incorporated materials from everyday life in his sculptures, including entire found objects. He tended to prefer materials that were worn, remarking, "It is very important for me to use materials that don't alienate the society where I live." Probably because of his own history, he identified with the working classes and the downtrodden, often the subjects of his works.