We are all under construction, slowly becoming either walls, pathways, or pillars. Charbel Coffi, the prolific painter from Cotonou, Benin, speaks for all three.
At a recent pop-up in Lagos, Nigeria, titled Identité Révélée, 12 carefully curated works from four past exhibitions were on display. It was a fitting introduction to Charbel’s artistic sensibilities and range for a new audience in Lagos—Africa’s largest art market.
The man is a giant—a gentle giant. He is both brawn and brain. His works reflect a keen, intelligent dissection of pressing global issues, rendered with the finesse of a sophisticated visual raconteur. His pieces are tactile and layered, colourful yet earthy, sharp-witted yet abstract.
The best way to recognize an artist is by how he exaggerates—how he distorts and displaces forms to achieve transcendence. The genius of Coffi’s work lies in how he seamlessly fuses the abstract with the concrete, using intelligible inscriptions to enhance visual representation. These three components define his visual signature.
There is a restless, pulsating spirit of Africa in his work. He paints a world under construction, depicting a people struggling with identity—seeking to position the beauty of their culture and heritage while weighed down by Western standards of selfhood. Coffi envisions a realm of wholeness, where the African is intellectual, and where his broken places and rough edges are precisely what qualifies him for a seat at the table.
You can feel the warm glow of the African sun scattered across the brown, sack-like canvas, the dark orange scowl of Mother Earth, and the theatre of broken dreams and dormant consciousness.
In the series A Thousand and One Thoughts, which consists of Transfert 1, Transmission, Illumine 2, and Focalisation, Coffi pays homage to artists—visual provocateurs often misunderstood by society. He defines the artist as a medium, incubating ideas, transmitting them with technical skill, and illuminating paths that offer emotional elixirs to both the viewer and society. He understands that the artist is an institution—less to be understood than to be felt.
Culture Reconciliation, represented by the work Entente, explores the harmony between old traditions and new energy. A man in traditional headgear stares out, embodying the tension and balance between history and modernity. The past is a map. Its signposts help us navigate an unpredictable future.
In The Present Seen From The Past, Coffi elongates his figures’ necks—a striking visual metaphor for the continuous search for wisdom from ancestral tributaries. This series considers the aged in society as institutions, their documented folklore a compass for addressing both the joys and pains of the present. The works in this series—Incroyable, Incroyable 3, Impensable 1, and Impensable 2—remind us that memory is both inheritance and responsibility.
The final series, Climate Change: From Earth to Space, serves as both advocacy and warning. It frames global warming through a dystopian lens, shifting perspectives from Space, above the ground, and on it.
Part science fiction, part prophecy, the work warns of an unfolding crisis we are yet to fully document. Here, Coffi becomes a medium, offering visual evidence of an atmospheric shift beyond our current comprehension. These works belong in global forums where the future of our planet is debated and decided.
The artist is both a town crier and a pacifier. Charbel Coffi moves between these roles with ease. His works are well-trodden paths for intelligent dialogue, bridging social, political, geographical, and spiritual divides.
And for good measure, he grounds this presentation with Queen or King (Reine Ou Roi). He pays homage to women who live as both visionaries and nurturers. A female figure wears a traditional headpiece. Her face is distorted—perhaps from the weight of expectation or the oversized roles she must fill daily. This is the archetype of the African woman. She who must be both He and Virgin.
There is a rhythm of duality in this presentation—the artist as both alarmist and pacifier, the past as a guide to the future, history as a means to understand the present, and the woman as both nurturer and visionary—a pillar of society.
Coffi’s images are like gazing at a weathered, algae-covered wall—layers of time, memory, and meaning. They are walls, built and broken, waiting to kiss the sun again. His materials—acrylics, natural pigments, and laterite for his earth tones—further root his work in history and place. He is a prolific mixed-media artist.
He is an old soul. This pop-up exhibition was Charbel Coffi’s identity reveal.
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