The black figure in this silkscreen is a character whose origins Kay Gasei has described specifically: a commission in 2016 related to the Black Lives Matter movement inspired a starkly different figure from the earlier white line drawings that characterised his work. Where those earlier characters were nondescript, indulgent, almost hedonistic, the black figure — filled in, with coarse hair and penetrating white eyes — represented acute consciousness, pain and a profound connection to suffering and reality. The BLM piece made the figure visible in a way that the earlier work deliberately avoided.
Gasei was born in Lusaka, Zambia in 1991 and moved to England shortly after his birth, studying Illustration at Oxford Brookes University and graduating in 2014. He works across mythology, history, African folktales, Greek mythology and Asian narratives, using symbolism, recurring motifs and nondescript characters in abstract spaces to act out the stories he is drawn to. Silkscreen print on Hahnemühle Etching Paper in Natural White. Signed. £160.
