Sosa Joseph: Rain over the river

“I come from a rain-drenched riverbank. Apart from the river, which always flowed by, the phenomenon that governed our being was the rain. Its presence or absence did not merely mark the seasons—it shaped the very fabric of our consciousness.”

— Sosa Joseph in an artist statement. All subsequent quotes by the artist are from the same source.

“We lived through alternating spells of rain and rainlessness [...] When it poured without end, flooding the riverbank and driving us away from our homes—making us refugees of rain—we prayed for it to stop. Yet when it finally went away—we never knew where—it left a silence so deep and hollow that we longed intensely for its return.”

“Even in its total absence, the rain never truly left us; it continued to fall within our minds. This inner rain blended rain and rainlessness. At times pouring incessantly and faintly resented, and at other times gone but missed with intense yearning, rain was always there, like the river itself.”

“The rains I remember have many colours and distinct characters [...] afternoon rains were brass and amber; night rains, blue and purple; and the clamouring showers we woke up to on drenched mornings, olive and grey.”

“I realised it was not the rain itself I must paint, but what is rained over—the drenched and dampened lives and geography, transfixed by the rains, both inner and outer. These soaked, damp, and dry vignettes of life along the river—through rain and rainlessness—coalesce in my mind into a single, unbroken rain. Ever-present and timeless, much like the river. Because, for us, rainlessness is also a kind of rain.”