Nkuyo, 30 x 40 inches, charcoal on Monzonite paper, 2023. Photo © Alian Rives' Studio

Nkuyo invokes a spiritual figure associated with crossroads, roads, thresholds, guidance, and mediation. I use the symbol of the crossroads as a metaphor for diasporic identity: a space where territories, memories, spiritual traditions, and cultural systems intersect. The work considers Nkuyo not simply as a spiritual sign but as a force of passage and transformation. Through charcoal, I fragment and reassemble the image, allowing the drawing to occupy a threshold between representation and abstraction, memory and invention, and inherited tradition and diasporic transformation.