Cassi Namoda (Mozambican, b. 1988) | Man of My Dreams, 2017 | Acrylic on canvas, 91x91 (93.5x93.5)

Signed, dated and dedicated in felt tip pen, verso.

Cassi Namoda (b. 1988, Maputo, Mozambique) is a painter whose richly coloured figurative works bring together personal memory, Mozambican history, mythology and the visual language of everyday life. Having grown up across several countries and briefly studied cinematography, she approaches painting almost like filmmaking, constructing scenes that feel like fragments from a larger, unfolding narrative. Her work frequently draws on archival photography, literature and art history, combining African vernacular traditions with references to European modernism and the Western canon. Through this mixture, Namoda creates a distinctive form of magical realism in which ordinary encounters become charged with nostalgia, desire, humour and melancholy. Her paintings are held in collections including the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Baltimore Museum of Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

In this painting, Namoda constructs an intimate and enigmatic interior in which music, romance and melancholy seem to coexist. A woman holding records stands beside a turntable, while the prominently painted word “BEETHOVEN” introduces a direct reference to the European musical canon—a characteristic example of Namoda’s tendency to bring Western cultural references into dialogue with African experience. The solitary male figure, the woman’s tear, and the dramatic orange sun create the atmosphere of a scene remembered rather than simply observed, somewhere between domestic reality and dream. Its flattened perspective, expressive outlines and saturated fields of pink, ochre, green and deep blue reinforce the artist’s characteristic sense of magical realism. Like many of Namoda’s paintings, the work can be read as a cinematic fragment: a moment whose precise story remains unresolved, inviting the viewer to imagine what happened before and what might follow