GALERIE FARAH FAKHRI is pleased to announce the gallery’s shift into a new Global South-focussed programme, which will create dialogues across geographies and position the Ivory Coast within a greater conversation about the South. Marking this transition is a group exhibition of five international artists whose practices merge abstraction with figuration, inhabiting space between the real and the imaginary to question dominant narratives and imagine new artistic worlds.
Realms of the Imaginary brings together painting, installation, textile, paper, and mixed media to explore the imaginary as a place, a language, as well as a form of resistance by shaping pathways across borders, materials, and experiences.
The unconscious is always at work – something which is continually shaped by our landscapes, histories, and experiences. Where words fall short, the artists recreate what cannot be fully explained by using symbolism, materiality, and representation. The work unfolds across various realms of experience, brushing against the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary.
The intangible nature of memory and feeling carries layers of resonance, shape shifting across time, cultures, and contexts. A motif, and image, or even a material can say one thing yet suggest another, opening up pathways to new readings. In Realms of the Imaginary, the artists create a space for open-ended engagement, presenting new perspectives from the Global South that paint a constellation of places, voices, and visions to imagine futures on their own terms.
Across the exhibition, materials play a central role. Through resourceful and inventive processes, material constraints yield to artistry as matter is pushed beyond its bounds. Colours, gestures, and materials act as shared codes that shift in meaning, allowing abstraction and figuration to give form to dreams and desire.
Rooted in diverse geographies, each artist forges an imaginative migration, creating layered spaces of ambiguity, emotion, and transformation that address the inherent paradox of perception through the reality of the unconscious and the presence of the viewer.
In Nairobi, Agnes Waruguru’s practice spans painting, drawing, printmaking, needlework, and installation. Her work combines technical craft with visionary abstraction. Often referencing reproductive labour and personal identity politics, Waruguru treats painting as both site and process: a way of exploring materiality, memory, and the ways objects act as carriers of personal and collective histories.
Paris-based Alejandro Marín Parisi, originally from Buenos Aires, keeps painting at the core of his practice but expands its definition. Through collage, books, and collaborative workshops, his works incorporate notes, sketches, and fragments of daily life. By embracing but also rejecting the arbitrary interpretation of visual languages and cultural symbols, he extends the notion of abstraction into new dimensions.
Greek artist Dimitrios Trade explores recurring scenarios and characters in his paintings, however unfamiliar or uncanny. From intuitive sketches to playful, recognisable motifs, his pieces balance humour with critique, using abstraction to emulate spectacle, ritual, and convention.
In his process-based practice, Tunisian-French artist Béchir Boussandel allows climate, dust, and water to intervene directly on his canvases. Moving between control and chance, his abstractions evolve into bas-reliefs and figurative forms that anchor material transformation within lived experience.
Aly Mazeh is an Ivorian-Lebanese painter who combines painting, intimate drawings, and tapestries with an intense emotion. Guided by intuition and expressiveness, Mazeh moves between large canvases that channel deep spiritual and inner states and smaller formats that explore ideas of freedom and belonging.
Together, these artists highlight the Global South not as a fixed location, but a space for dialogue, creativity, and an opportunity to shape the ways of seeing and understanding.