About Me
Komy Fredi
Artist Statement
Painting Identity, Memory, and African Experience Through Hand-Painted Pixels
I paint in pixels not on a screen, but by hand, stroke by stroke and block by block. This visual language began during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, when I found myself studying images on an old keypad phone. Zooming in, every image dissolved into tiny squares. From a distance, those fragments became whole again. That simple observation changed the way I thought about painting and about people. It reminded me that identity, memory, and experience are built from countless small moments that only reveal their meaning when seen together. My work centers on African figures, particularly women, as a way of exploring presence, dignity, cultural memory, and contemporary identity. Each portrait is constructed from carefully painted blocks of color that invite viewers to move between proximity and distance, discovering different ways of seeing the same image. While the hand-painted pixel remains the foundation of my practice, my recent work expands this visual language through expressive backgrounds composed of transparent layers, drips, gestural marks, and unfinished spaces. Drawing inspiration from African history, mythology, traditional hairstyles, music, and everyday life, I explore how inherited stories continue to shape the present. In an increasingly digital world, I reclaim the pixel through paint, time, and human touch. What is usually instant becomes deliberate. What appears fragmented becomes complete. Through this process, I invite viewers to slow down and reconsider how perception, memory, and identity are formed.
Fred
about the artist
Iraguha Komayombi Fred (Komy Fredi) is a contemporary Rwandan artist based in Kigali. His paintings explore African identity, cultural memory, and the dialogue between tradition and contemporary life through a distinctive hand-painted pixel language. He studied fine art from 2018 to 2021 before establishing his professional practice. During the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, he developed his signature approach after observing how digital images break into tiny squares when magnified. He transformed this digital visual language into a slow, handcrafted painting process, where fragmented marks gradually resolve into complete figurative compositions. His recent practice combines meticulously painted figures with expressive, layered backgrounds inspired by African history, mythology, traditional culture, and everyday experience. Through this evolving body of work, Komy Fredi investigates how memory, heritage, and perception continue to shape contemporary African identity. His work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Rwanda and continues to evolve through research into visual storytelling, portraiture, and contemporary African narratives.
