Ayana.

In her story, the wonder comes from a rooftop in Dosso. As a girl, on clear nights, her grandmother Haoua would take her up the outside stairs and name the sky for her: the one that doesn't twinkle is a planet, that belt of three is one single shape, this one always rises from the same spot. She didn't know a word of astronomy; she wasn't teaching her astronomy. She was teaching her to look up and never take the sky for granted. Haoua is eighty-six now, still in Dosso, and when they talk on the phone it's her who asks what can be seen these days.

The portrait is simple and fixed: a giraffe with a long neck and large ears, facing forward, in a crimson-red wool coat with gold buttons, the knit scarf and teardrop earrings, all the same red, against a neutral background. Nothing more. I created her still and with no set dressing: framed, it's the kind of piece you hang once and keep for years. The rest of Ayana is in her biography.