REFLEXES

Reflexes tells various aspects of everyday life in Africa, a continent undergoing a rapid economic and social expansion, where optimism rules. The change of regard toward Africa means that today, in São Tomé and Príncipe, Nigeria, South Africa or Morocco, the people of the African continent live a renewed vibration of positivity and self-love. This renewed gaze, both from the world at Africa and the continent’s populations themselves, did not escape the observations of Kwame Sousa (b. 1980, São Tomé and Príncipe). In Reflexes, Kwame brings scenes from his native country to reveal a renewed pan-African feeling.

Reflexes is thus a series of images produced from loose thoughts, spontaneous observations and unique moments that Kwame lives in São Tomé and Príncipe. In a unpremeditated and intuitive fashion, he shows São Tomé and Príncipe’s society. The series represents unsolved aspects within contemporary societies and community behaviours such as going to the barber to get a fashionable haircut, the maximum expression of African pride. The artist explored universal themes, such as maternity–which the artist reiterates is very present in African sculpture, equating these statues to sculpted Venuses–and other topics that are specifically African, like water transportation in oil or fuel barrels at the top of the head.