From Afghanistan to Bosnia, from Somalia to Kosovo, from Serbia to Ethiopia, I began for relief to express my emotions through paintings. As a tribute to my humanitarian experience in the Balkans, I took Deçan as my artist name, city of western Kosovo severely damaged during the conflict.

The close contact with suffering and isolation nourishes my inspiration. Enhanced mechanisms of resilience developed from childhood crosses the singularity of my work. Coming back from war, my approach becomes more introspective and analytical, focusing on the exploration of the brain, and in particular on the study of the links between conscious and unconscious mechanisms in matters of creativity and on duality.

Self-taught, I paint exclusively with painting knives and oil paint – without any other device. The physical and instinctive dimensions are the foundations of my artistic process. I am looking for raw and authentic emotions with only one goal : To allow each one of us to sincerely question ourselves on what we are in the very depths of our souls while challenging our own truths. To move forward, again and again, against all odds « like a child, as French neuropsychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik writes, driven to death who keeps inventing strategies for returning to life ».

Deçan