My name is Ania Diallo. I'm a painter and visual artist, but l've been drawing and painting since I was young. I started henna in about 2019 as a method to be creative when I had times where I didn't want to paint. Painting is something that's meditative for me and so when I started pursuing it as a business, I became burnt out. Then I really became burnt out and uninspired during the pandemic.

So henna was a pivot for me to stay creative and still work on my penmanship. I noticed that henna was a way to bring people together during that isolated time. There was a way around it because henna is historically antibacterial and antifungal. So, that was kind of my way around it but it was a way to still bring communities together while we were so isolated and I realized people really liked it.

It's more affordable than painting so I began doing it full time. In 2022 I moved from Louisville, Kentucky down to Nashville and I've been doing henna here since.