Moses Salihou: Rencontres Émotionnelles

Inspired by a recent trip to Cameroon, where he emigrated from over a decade ago, Rencontres Émotionnelles is Moses Salihou's most personal body of work to date. Each painting is a reflection of time spent in his hometown of Maroua, surrounded by his family, friends, and community. Salihou’s new paintings feature multiple figures positioned together, expanding his signature abstract-figurative approach to explore the richness of kinship and connection. Salihou describes a whirlwind of attending a cycle of funerals, weddings, birthdays, and dinner parties, moments of gathering where pain and joy coalesce. The paintings convey an overwhelming sense of collectiveness. 

Salihou also takes care to depict moments of quiet intimacy, like the act of braiding hair or sharing an embrace. Unlike previous bodies of work, Rencontres Émotionnelles includes paintings of specific members of Salihou's family, most notably a pairing which depict his mother and father. 

In the background of many of the works in Rencontres Émotionnelles is a series of repeated, horizontal and vertical silvery-white lines arranged in a grid-like pattern. Salihou describes them as references to the scar markings that members of his tribal group use to adorn their faces. They are considered marks of beauty and symbols of belonging. The visual result is a woven textural effect that creates a rhythmic appearance against the dark backdrop. 

“There is a generous, irresistible exuberance in Moses Salihou's paintings and watercolours, but there is also the expression of a deep, existential desire to dialogue with the Western history of art and its classical genres."

 

-Catherine Bédard
Curator and Director of Programming at the Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris