Amina Jules Dia, self-taught visual artist based in Dakar, Senegal

Amina Jules Dia is a Senegalese self-taught visual artist. She was born in 2002 in Dakar, Senegal. Her art mainly revolves around the connection, identities, heritages, spirituality and the quest for self.

What guides her art is time and its ruins, the stains that add to the white of her life, the music that escapes from her guitar and the perpetual search for who she is. Each photo she takes represents a whole life, a whole universe that becomes a compass of the space within.

It is by looking for this answer that she creates her artistic goal is to find a bearing for herself, to answer these existential questions and to find refuge for the great wanderer that she is. She creates only for herself. Perhaps in her, others will find themselves.

Jules is an artist of wandering, emotions, and freedom of creation. Her photography and writings are the reflection of her solitary life and the answers to her inner questions, which she transposes into her art.

What’s the one achievement or moment in your photography career that you’re most proud of?

My greatest achievement as a photographer has been finding a technique that is uniquely my own, one that had never existed before and that represents everything I am—somewhere between wandering and writing. I know that at the heart of each of my creations, it is myself that one finds. That is my greatest pride.

How do you feel about 54Ruum?

I feel good here. I discover wandering souls like myself who create in order to live. It reassures me. It means I’m not alone in my world.