
Charlse Mbeh
Artist
Artist statement
I create conceptual Charcoal and Acrylic Portraits that turn familiar faces, everyday objects, and cultural symbols into questions about the world we live in. While exploring other mediums too like Ballpoint Pen and Pastels to tell Creative stories.
My portraits are not simply representations of individuals; they are constructed narratives in which the subject becomes a vessel for larger questions.
My work explores the tensions between memory, power, love, loss, culture, and social injustice. I am interested in the stories that exist beneath the surface of a portrait—the things we inherit, the things we survive, and the things we are afraid to say out loud.
Transforming everyday objects into symbolic language, objects associated with domestic life and survival are removed from their ordinary functions and reimagined in my portraits. By so doing, the familiar becomes unsettling. An object associated with nourishment may instead reveal what a society has been fed—ideologically, culturally, or emotionally.