At the heart of the , color does not decorate, it vibrates with an almost ritual intensity. Female faces emerge on highly textured African fabrics crossed by ocher lines, symbolic scarifications and gazes that seem to be directed simultaneously at the viewer and at another invisible place. They are women who support, protect, intercede or remember. Women who constitute the axis of balance of the Bubi community.
The exhibition Bubi woman in African fabricby the Equatoguinean artist Bësákkò Biá Rihóle, artistic name of Germán Paco Buika, born in Rebola, on the island of Bioko, in , proposes a visual and symbolic journey through that spiritual and cultural dimension. Painting, illustration and textile art combine to build a contemporary iconography inspired by the traditions of the Bubi people, one of the oldest Bantu peoples in central Africa. It will be open until May 24.
The exhibition revolves around the female figure as a symbol of continuity and memory within the Bubi culture. The works dialogue with , which become artistic support and a bridge between tradition and contemporaneity. For the author, women occupy a fundamental place in the worldview of their people.
The only thing I do is tell the history of the town from the work, Equatorial Guinean artist
Bësákkò Biá Rihóle,
This idea runs through the entire exhibition. In each work, the female figure appears as the guardian of a vital principle: fertility, the protection of the community, the transmission of tradition or the link with nature. The pieces receive names that refer to symbolic characters or functions within the Bubi culture. In SibulawéloFor example, the figure represents “the defender, the one who protects and fights battles.” In Abovethe woman embodies the person in charge of the well-being and health of the community, while Uri symbolizes prosperity and fertility. These figures are not concrete portraits but cultural archetypes. Symbolic heroines that condense stories, values and mythologies transmitted orally for generations.
“The main story is survival,” says Rihóle in an interview with EL PAÍS. “The continuity of the Bubi people. Many times we fear that one day there will be no Bubis, but as long as this feminine energy exists, the people will continue to exist.”
One of the most unique features of the exhibition is the support. The works are made on African fabrics of great chromatic richness, a material that introduces an additional dimension to the painting. The idea came almost accidentally. During a visit to the gallery shop, the Equatorial Guinean became fascinated by the textiles and began to imagine how his characters could inhabit those surfaces. “When I saw those fabrics I immediately imagined my work on them,” he recalls. “I thought about the stories of the Bubi people captured in those fabrics.”
The use of fabric also has a symbolic meaning. Bioko, Rihóle’s home island, has often experienced an ambivalent relationship with the African continent. Although it is geographically part of Africa, its insularity has generated a certain feeling of cultural distance. Working on African fabrics is, in a way, a way of reconnecting with that continent. “We are Africans. Sometimes we think that Africa is there and we are here, but in reality we are part of the same story,” the artist emphasizes. The fabrics thus become a place of intersection between Africa and the diaspora, the ancestral world and the present, memory and artistic creation.
If the material support refers to Africa, Rihóle’s visual language is articulated around another fundamental element, color. In its artistic conception, color is not simply an aesthetic choice but an essential principle. In the Bubi tradition, everything created by divinity has a color that identifies it and is manifested through light.
The artist develops this idea in his creative process. For him, the figures already potentially exist on the canvas before being painted. “I always ask a question when I talk about my work. When the canvas is blank, is the figure already there or do I put it in?” he reflects. “Maybe the figure is already there and just needs to be released.” That is why in some pieces the shapes seem to partially emerge from the fabric, as if they were emerging from a previous dimension. In others, the textile patterns merge with the bodies, creating a sensation of movement or transformation. The scarifications painted on the faces—done in yellow tones close to ocher—reinforce this symbolic dimension. “Yellow represents the power of the sun, the light. It is the color that connects with the energy of creation,” comments the artist.
Although Rihóle’s work draws deeply on the Bubi tradition, his visual language is clearly contemporary. The composition, color treatment and combination of techniques respond to a current artistic approach. The artist is aware of this tension between past and present. “Culture is not static,” he says. “If the world moves in one direction, we cannot turn our backs on it. We have to contemporary history without losing its essence.”
This balance is precisely one of the challenges of contemporary African art. The rise of African art in international fairs has multiplied its visibility, but it has also simplified its readings and runs the risk of being absorbed by the label of the exotic. Rihóle avoids this simplification by taking refuge in cultural narration. “The only thing I do is tell the story of the town from the work. The important thing is that the story is told as it is,” he comments.
That narrative idea is central to his artistic practice. Each work is, in a way, a chapter in a larger story: the construction of a visual iconography for the Bubi people. Rihóle points out that, unlike other cultures with widely disseminated visual representations, many characters in Bubi mythology lack recognizable iconographic images. Its objective is precisely to fill that void. “I want to create iconographic images of the town,” he explains. “Heroes, heroines and characters of our stories.”
This project connects with a deeply oral cultural tradition. For centuries, stories were passed down through stories, songs, and ceremonies. Visual art now becomes a new medium to preserve and reinterpret that heritage.
Art is a way of preserving and transmitting the culture of a people, but also of adapting it to the current world.
Beyond the aesthetic, Rihóle’s work points to a fundamental question: how to preserve a culture without turning it into a museum piece. An idea that he formulates like this: “Art is a way of preserving and transmitting the culture of a people, but also of adapting it to the current world.”
Rihóle’s trajectory develops between two shores. He trained with teachers such as Ricardo Madana and at the Hispano-Guineano Cultural Center, as well as with the artist . He later expanded his training at the Higher School of Art and Design of the Balearic Islands.
He currently lives and works in Bioko, although he maintains links with Spain and other countries. His recent exhibitions have taken place in cultural spaces in Equatorial Guinea, Mallorca and South Africa. After Madrid he will pass through Bilbao and Mieres, and in November he will exhibit in Bolivia.
In the Bubi tradition, the universe is conceived as a constant relationship between two dimensions: the earth here and the earth beyond. Women—mothers, guardians, mediators—occupy a central place in that balance. Rihóle’s paintings seem to be situated precisely in that intermediate space. Between fabric and painting, between history and imagination, between cultural memory and contemporary art. A place where color is energy and memory, form. And where art, as the artist himself suggests, does nothing more than open a path that others can follow: “This path is not ours. It is a path that we open for others to follow.”
