Rafiy Okefolahan, "Boza! An end, a start ..."

Exhibition from June 1 to 30, 2018, Espace Ochola, Brussels

 

Boza! Boza! Boza!

Voices resonate in the air, a cry of victory. Boza! All the migrants from Libya, from Morocco, from everywhere know this clamor, like a roar of dying to have succeeded, to have reached the promised land so often hoped for, so often fantasized. Relieved to have arrived alive on the other side of the sea. Guided solely by the hope of a better life, of dignified existence, thousands of men and women are trying to reach Europe by the Mediterranean. Hope is an imperious master who forbids thinking about return and who takes beings in an absolute and irrevocable movement forward.

Freezing the marvelous moment of relief and liberation, Rafiy Okefolahan expresses in his paintings the euphoria of having finally arrived somewhere.

 

What if the trip was also internal? The works of Rafiy Okefolahan invite to an intimate reflection on the relationship to the other, to his existence, to his path.

Crossing borders, going to meet people, celebrating these life paths through color, that's what the artist does through his paintings. Colors are messengers of emotion. A spontaneous emotion that seems to spring up. Cléophée Moser writes that at Rafiy Okefolahan's; painting is born from a gesture and not from a design ". It is the gesture of the creator, of the demiurge artist who gives birth to a whole world through his art. The painter dances with color. He gives it shape and It becomes matter through the work of the touch, the impasto and the association of several techniques: acrylic paint, oil pastel, and pigments merge in a powerful memorial symphony. The canvas is a partition of shapes and colors, the witness of 'a story read, seen or heard.