The new works in this exhibition represent significant leaps in Turay’s formal and conceptual ambitions. A lush celebration of life flows through three canvas in a representation of a traditional spiritual dance in Deep Blue Turay’s first triptych.  A color steeped in art history, blue for Turay evokes Planet Earth’s chromatic identity and is a symbol of infinity and life. The intense, clear ultramarine shades are achieved using majorelle, a natural pigment from Marrakkech’s markets. The dance is a traditional way of communication, and the storyline wades through geometric symbols that present purified emotions.  In Heaven with tears, the same blue is obscured by earthy textures and neutral paints. This work captures the exuberant human joy Turay saw on his research trips in African villages, whose inhabitants are deemed by mainstream society to be suffering in hellish misery due to their poverty. The symbolic blue cannot stay saturated due to a lack of material means, yet the image demonstrates a more sublime spiritual heaven. 

Turay is deliberate and outspoken about his solutions for curing Africa’s status as the world’s poorest continent whose potential is going to waste due to emigration and misguided priorities. Blue Rise and Fall, is inspired by Turay’s experience growing up in the United States, where he realized, from a distance, Africa’s desperate need for patriotism.  The work celebrates Africa’s past glory with feverish urgency, and insists that its current low ebb is merely a stage in a natural and perpetual cycle. Layering hazy, starry figures painted with coffee and sharp acrylic strokes, Turay creates a rapturous sea of emotions. In Land of Shipwreck, ocean-like blue pools over a dense layer of vertical and horizontal lines that reference facial scars used for tribal identification. Africa is besieged by oceans, and there exists an inextricable link between seawater and displacement. To the left of the painting, an image of a traditional western African sculpture is jettisoned and surrounded by figures of drowning people who prefer the risk of death over rebuilding Africa. Roots of Life turns its attention to the color red, the color of active blood and the energetic continuity of life. An abstract tree pulsates through the large canvas; its meandering branches search for balance and liberation, and suggest that humans are the sole source of our society’s disappointments. More realistically rendered animal and botanical motifs are included as witnesses of the raw vibrations of spiritual momentum Turay aims to depict.