Kirubel Mandefro: Before We Call it Peace

Incubator is delighted to present 'Before We Call It Peace,' a solo exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Kirubel Mandefro where tenderness, vulnerability and uncertainty meet on the way towards belonging and peace.

Mandefro’s work begins with closeness. He is interested in the quietness of a gesture, one body beside another, and in the feelings that gather within moments of intimacy. The bed becomes the locus for these encounters. A man, often half-nude and wrapped in sheets, lies alone in thought; elsewhere, two men rest against one another, caught in the aftermath of an encounter. The private world of the bed becomes a place where intimacy and solitude coexist.

In this body of work, Mandefro considers closeness between men and the tenderness it can hold, while exploring delicate questions of safety and trust. As he writes, “I used to understand safety as the absence of danger, but these works have made me think about it as something more fragile: the possibility of remaining open in the presence of precariousness.”

For Mandefro, trust begins in remaining present while uncertainty persists. His understanding of intimacy is informed by his experience as a queer man growing up in Ethiopia and now living in the UK. His own experiences provide a point of departure, but the figures remain deliberately elusive. A particular body, relationship or memory becomes a space through which something less specific can emerge, allowing the personal to open onto a shared experience of intimacy, longing and recognition. He thinks of the body as a place where masculinity, longing and belonging can meet. A body can want to be held and still remember how to protect itself. It can feel close to someone while remaining partly unknowable.

In the two paintings of couples, this tension is especially apparent. The figures lean upon one another, their bodies offering support while revealing how much is at stake in being held. There is a melancholia here, a sense of romantic uncertainty accompanied by a quieter, existential unease.

The settings are similarly unsettled. Beds, walls and crumpled sheets slip away, leaving the figures suspended in an ambiguous space. Mandefro’s generous brushstrokes build the figures before loosening into pure expression, as the room becomes less a particular place than a psychological one. Freedom and vulnerability sit together on the canvas.

'Before We Call It Peace' inhabits the moment before resolution, when grief and loss are still being confronted and what comes next remains uncertain. It is a liminal space, hovering between what has happened and what might follow, where surrender and recognition begin to make room for something else. A sense of peace is captured in these works, yet something has been lost in its attainment.