Born and raised in Côte d’Ivoire, David-Josué Oyoua is a self-taught visual artist. Influenced by African culture. He uses digital art, photomanipulation, compositing, matte painting techniques to tell stories.
David-Josué Oyoua is based in Abidjan and apart from his training in medical sciences, he learned graphic and digital arts in a self-taught way. He currently works in communications and advertising with various companies where he has proven himself as a graphic designer, art director and now as a freelance creative director.
Art lover since his childhood, he already possessed great drawing skills which was his favorite hobby. Later, as a teenager, with the advent of computers and digital technology, he traded his brush and pencil for a computer mouse. His interest in computer graphics, especially photomontage software, grew to the point where he became literally addicted to it.
Besides calling himself a digital artist, he also describes himself as a “visual storyteller” who aims to tell stories through his creations. His working technique is compositing, a mix of real photos shot in studio and directed by himself or often bought in royalty-free image banks. He also uses photo realistic computer generated images (modeling and 3D rendering) and touches of matte painting (digital painting) in his compositions.
My artistic approach is to mainly to revisit through his representations the stories, mythologies, allegories, legends and folk tales in an attempt to “Africanize” them. However, my approach goes well beyond just changing the skin color by using African models… I pay particular attention to costumes, sets, props … everything is contextualized to get closer to the African culture.
