This work belongs to my Meta Abfillage series, where earlier figurative paintings are re-layered with collage to create a dialogue between past and present. Unlike my previous Abfillage pieces, where collage was embedded directly into the body, Meta Abfillage overlays the figurative image with a second body of abstraction, one that speaks of memory, survival, and cultural endurance.
The underlying painting, begun in 2022, contains a human figure a record of presence, individuality, and lived experience. In 2025, I returned to the canvas and intervened with newspaper collage and painted forms of cassava leaves, symbols of survival and collective memory.
By obscuring the body beneath these layered motifs, the work asks: What remains visible, and what becomes submerged? In this tension, cassava emerges as both symbol and metaphor, a quiet second figure that carries the weight of history and survival, layered over the human form.
