This exhibition aims at highlighting the innovative and strong attitude of the most interesting African artists of the new generation to paint towards a new figurative direction, where the characters – mainly black people - become the real protagonists of short stories, involved in extraneous circumstances and visions.
The power of storytelling through portraiture turns into a vehicle for interrogating ideas of cultural heritage and identity.
Most of the times, characters are depicted as flat shapes, with little width, thin lines, almost as they were emptied bodies. If it wasn’t for the presence of human traits, i.e. eyes, nose and lips, they would be pure shadows.
Sometimes these artists self-portray, sometimes they represent real people they know, some other times they paint just imaginary characters. In any case, the figures are always wrapped in an unsettling atmosphere, which leads to the idea that these figures with human looks are in fact inhuman, unreal and spectral.
