Wetin bɛ: Freetown in Retrospect

unx-gallery, Freetown — 25th & 26th October 2025

The Bod Ose and the Memory of Light

Freetown transforms in silence. Streets change, rooftops rise, balconies vanish—one replaced façade at a time. Wetin bɛ: Freetown in Retrospect invites viewers to slow down and look again, tracing memory through the delicate language of watercolor. 

At the heart of the exhibition are the bod ose, the Krio wooden houses built by Africans who returned in the late eighteenth century. They were once symbols of autonomy and aspiration—homes crafted from timber, history, and determination. Today, many have been demolished or left to decay. In John Francis’s paintings, they appear suspended between presence and loss, rendered in translucent layers of pigment and light. 

For Francis, watercolor is not just a medium, but a way of thinking. “Watercolor feels closest to life itself—unpredictable, delicate, and alive,” he says. In each work, washes bleed into shadow, and precision gives way to chance. The result is neither nostalgia nor documentation, but a quiet form of testimony. These paintings carry the fragments of a city whose heritage is vanishing in plain sight. 

The question embedded in the exhibition’s title — Wetin bɛ? — lingers. What happened? What is still happening? The civil war scarred Freetown, but indifference continues the erasure. Francis paints not to mourn, but to insist that memory deserves attention, that architecture is more than wood or nails—it is identity. 

Born in Freetown and self-taught, Francis first exhibited at the historic Gaga Gallery before the war. Years spent in exile in The Gambia deepened his relationship to watercolor—its fluid unpredictability, its quiet discipline. Today, his work forms part of collections across Sierra Leone and abroad, including the World Bank and the Sierra Leone Embassy in Senegal. 

Wetin bɛ: Freetown in Retrospect brings these reflections home, inviting viewers to encounter the city not as it is, but as it remembers itself—fragile, luminous, persistent.

Wetin bɛ: Freetown in Retrospect invites viewers to slow down and look again, tracing memory through the delicate language of watercolor.

At the heart of the exhibition are the bod ose, the Krio wooden houses built by Africans who returned in the late eighteenth century. They were once symbols of autonomy and aspiration—homes crafted from timber, history, and determination. Today, many have been demolished or left to decay. In John Francis’s paintings, they appear suspended between presence and loss, rendered in translucent layers of pigment and light.

For Francis, watercolour is not just a medium, but a way of thinking.
“Watercolour feels closest to life itself—unpredictable, delicate, and alive,” he says.
In each work, washes bleed into shadow, and precision gives way to chance. The result is neither nostalgia nor documentation, but a quiet form of testimony. These paintings carry the fragments of a city whose heritage is vanishing in plain sight.

The question embedded in the exhibition’s title — Wetin bɛ? — lingers. What happened? What is still happening? The civil war scarred Freetown, but indifference continues the erasure. Francis paints not to mourn, but to insist that memory deserves attention, that architecture is more than wood or nails — it is identity.

Born in Freetown and self-taught, Francis first exhibited at the historic Gaga Gallery before the war. Years spent in exile in The Gambia deepened his relationship to watercolor — its fluid unpredictability, its quiet discipline. Today, his work forms part of collections across Sierra Leone and abroad, including the World Bank and the Sierra Leone Embassy in Senegal.

Wetin bɛ: Freetown in Retrospect brings these reflections home, inviting viewers to encounter the city not as it is, but as it remembers itself — fragile, luminous, persistent.