Wuh.ey - “Mlinzi wa Wakati”

From the series: African Fusion
Paper: Hahnemühle Fine Art Archival Print
Sheet size: 60 × 60 cm
Year: Edition of 2025
Edition: 3 + 1 AP

Wuh.ey – “Mlinzi wa Wakati”

In front of a small street bar stands an old woman, wrapped in a robe of woven colors, her head framed by a circular, radiant collar—half crown, half halo. Behind her: plastic chairs, bottles, and religious images. "Mlinzi wa Wakati" —the Keeper of Time—is a portrait that oscillates between sacredness and everyday life, between history and the present.

In this silent scene, two worlds meet: the profane and the sublime. The woman seems to have fallen out of time, yet she simultaneously belongs to it. Her gaze bears the weight of memory, as if she were watching over the fragments of a history that is disintegrating all around her—in the walls, in the paint, in the hands of those who pass by.

Wuh.ey transforms the street into sacred terrain. The plastic chairs, the bottles, the dilapidated walls become symbols of a new aesthetic of the sacred—a sacred that survives because it can transform itself. The woman becomes a living relic of a world in which spirituality and everyday life are inextricably intertwined.

Its circular collar is reminiscent of sun motifs, ancient Egyptian deities, and European Renaissance portraits—and yet it remains entirely present, like a textile aura woven from memory and dignity.

"Mlinzi wa Wakati" is a meditation on presence. It shows that history doesn't rest in museums, but lives on the street—in faces, fabrics, and gazes. In this image, the future stands still to listen to the past.