Silent weight of the city by Rapheal Akano
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: Acrylic and charcoal on canvas
Dimensions: 12 x 18 in
Year: 2026
Price: $300.00 USD
Status: available
My artwork explores the unseen burden carried within the human spirit amid the chaos of urban life. The bowed head and closed eyes reflect a moment of inward retreat—a quiet surrender to thoughts too heavy to speak. Beneath, the city glows with color and movement, symbolizing a world that never slows down, never notices, and rarely understands.
Why collect this work?
A bowed, monochrome head interrupts a compressed band of brightly painted buildings, making inward stillness appear both sheltered from and burdened by the city below.
- Akano states that his mixed-media practice addresses identity, emotion and human connection. Here, that concern is focused through the figure’s closed eyes and withheld gaze rather than through narrative action.
- In the photograph, the enlarged face tilts diagonally across the canvas while narrow buildings rise from its lower edge. The contrast of scale makes the city resemble a pressing accumulation rather than a setting the figure comfortably occupies.
- The documented acrylic and charcoal allow two visual registers: dark tonal modelling gives the face weight, while outlined blocks of yellow, red, blue and green flatten the architecture into a dense, insistent pattern.
- The work is significant for how directly it stages the mismatch between visible urban activity and an interior state that remains inaccessible. Its simplicity supports discussion of whose burdens a city registers or overlooks.
About the Artist
Rapheal Akano
Rapheal Akano is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: mixed-media. Based in Oyo, NG.
Nationality: Nigerian
Through art, I aim to communicate Beauty of African, emotion, identity, and the subtle details of human experience.
