I am Denise Balla, a Cameroonian multidisciplinary artist based in the South of France, creating under the name Violette.

My practice moves between watercolor, spoken poetry, sound, and moving image. I create works that are meant not only to be seen, but to be felt. Spaces where image, word, voice, and atmosphere meet.

These are not separate practices for me, but different expressions of the same artistic language. I move between them intuitively, letting a poem become a voice, a painting become a moving image, a poem expressed as watercolor and sound shape the atmosphere around both. Each form opens another way into the same work and into the feeling at its center.

At the heart of my work is a simple question: what remains of us beneath everything we have been taught to become?

I explore remembrance, presence, becoming, and the quiet beauty of returning to oneself.

My works often begin with a feeling, a memory, a word, or a poem. From there, it unfolds across different forms: watercolor, spoken word, sound, and film, allowing each piece to become more than an image.

Language is part of this process too.

I was born in Cameroon and grew up in France, in Lyon. Later, I spent time studying in San Diego, California, before living in Paris for several years and eventually settling in the South of France, where I create today. Moving between languages, places, and cultures has naturally shaped the way I experience the world.

I create in both English and French. Over time, I have noticed that roughly 80% of what comes through me arrives in English, and 20% in French. This is not something I decide. A poem, a reflection, a painting, a film, or a voice may arrive in one language or the other, and I allow it to take form as it comes.

I don’t decide the language. I listen.

I am interested in what happens in the space between what is seen and what is felt. The things we cannot always name, but recognize somewhere within ourselves.

My artistic journey has been one of remembering who I was before the world told me who to be. Through years of unlearning and quiet observation, I came to understand that art was never something I had to become. It was something I had to remember.

Today, I create from that place.

Each work is an invitation to slow down, to listen, to feel, and perhaps to remember something within yourself.

Art for feeling.

Art for being.

Art for remembering.

Because I believe we are all born artists. Sometimes, we simply forget.