Synkroniciti is excited to welcome painter Nahalah from Réunion Island, which lies roughly between Madagascar and Mauritius to the southeast of Africa. Her powerful acrylic paintings swirl with color, revealing nebula-like worlds. Sometimes these worlds are exploding, as in Explosion d’une étoile (Explosion of a star), a radiant composition in various shades of blue that ripples with motion. By contrast, Profondeur de l’espace (Depth of space) has a slower rhythm more akin to ripples in water. Thus Nahalah conjures both galactic dust and the world of the tide pool, as if by zooming in on the latter, we end up in outer space. This speaks of the connections between inner space and outer space, between earth and the universe, between our inner worlds and the distant stars. Warm reds, oranges, mustard yellows and bright green contrast with cool blue greens. The final painting Nébuleuse I (Nebula I) is from a series of paintings which depict interstellar nebulae peopled with dark figures in diaphanous white robes. In this painting, these figures turn toward the center of the nebula, suspended in space like archetypal guardians overseeing the birth of new stars. In 2019, writer Nnedi Okorafor defined Africanfuturism (distinct from Afrofuturism, its Western cousin) in science fiction as that “directly rooted in African culture, history, mythology and point-of-view” which “does not privilege or center the West,” and concerns “visions of the future” as proposed and imagined by Africans. These visions often offer alternatives to dystopias foreseen by Western writers. Nébuleuse I, with its optimism and mystical elements evokes Africanfuturism in visual art.
Experience Nahalah’s enchanting paintings in Synkroniciti’s November 30th issue, “Space,” Vol. 5, No. 4, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Nahalah, a painter from Réunion, mixes in her semi-abstract, semi-figurative painting the powerful elements of her native land. Between lace of ocean foam and cosmic clouds, volcanic bursts and cyclonic storms, her paintings are explosions of color where movement is everywhere. Each work contains a whole universe that comes to us to challenge us to open ourselves to other perspectives, other worlds. We are led on an inner journey towards a questioning that does not leave us indifferent. Nahalah’s art, often described as dreamlike, celestial, galactic and interstellar, delivers a timeless message about the meaning of life. (Bio by Dominique-Chantal Grondin.)