Wuh.ey - “Kurudi kwa Neema”

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 – “Kurudi kwa Neema”

Seated in the cool elegance of an old car is a woman who seems out of time—or far ahead of her time. Her body speaks in cinematic gestures, her gaze in the language of queens. Two companions flank her, their faces obscured by golden stars—symbols of fame, projection, perhaps also of the oblivion behind the glamour.

"Kurudi kwa Neema" is a tableau about representation and self-assertion. The woman at its center is not only beautiful, she is conscious. Her posture, her clothing, her quiet self-confidence refuse any reduction. She embodies the dignity of an aesthetic that refuses to be co-opted by the colonial gaze or the media spectacle.

The golden stars, ironic masks of fame, transform their companions into archetypes of invisibility: people celebrated by the system but never recognized. Wuh.ey's precise visual language unfolds between glamour and emptiness, between pop and myth. He choreographs identity as a play between visibility and mystery.

The car—half stage, half relic—becomes a capsule of collective memory. Here, Hollywood and Lagos, elegance and resistance, history and style merge. The scene seems as if an African Nouvelle Vague has taken control of the image.

Wuh.ey shows that beauty is not an ornament, but resistance. Neema, this work says, doesn't return—she never left. She just sat in the back of the car, waiting until we learn to look again.