Wuh.ey - “Mzee wa Bahari”

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 – “Mzee wa Bahari”

He sits quietly on the beach, amidst empty plastic chairs and deserted-looking parasols. "Mzee wa Bahari" – the Old Man of the Sea – is not a tourist, not a fisherman, but a figure between times. Dressed in purple and fur, with a beaded mask that completely covers his face, he watches over the boundary between land and water.

Here, Wuh.ey stages an image of spiritual tranquility and enigmatic detachment. The beach, otherwise a symbol of leisure and pleasure, becomes the setting for a ritual. The old man is not here to rest—he is here to remember. His presence transforms the scene into a silent liturgy of transition.

Behind the mask could be a king, a priest, an ancestor, or a digital spirit—an avatar vessel for the lost connection between humanity and nature. The sea roars, indifferent, ancient. It washes up stories, erases traces, calls for sacrifices.

"Mzee wa Bahari" is a meditation on transience and presence. In the indifference of the place—plastic, sand, wind—the purple cloak glows like an act of resistance against forgetting.

Wuh.ey shows us that even at the margins of modernity, power still resides: the power of silence, of memory, of dignity. The old man doesn't look – and yet he sees everything.