Between Myth and Mutation: Nicholas Grafia Reinvents Blue

In the Hua International rooms, shifting bodies transform under fluorescent brushstrokes. Shades of Blue, Nicholas Grafia’s new solo exhibition, opens a reflection on color as embodied emotion and narrative device. Born in the Philippines to an Asian mother and an African American father, the artist creates pictorial scenarios where fluid identities, diasporic memory, and marginalized cultures intertwine in visionary narratives. Blue - referencing Lana Del Rey, but also echoing Matisse, Mystique, and Asian folklore - becomes a code to explore pain, migration, and metamorphosis. Hybrid figures - masked, doubled, ambiguous - inhabit canvases and performances as apparitions suspended between the real and the mythical. In his work, Grafia alternates small pen drawings with large emotionally charged paintings, blending pop culture, spirituality, and queer affect. A poetic archive of the unspoken and the unseen, where the image is a threshold rather than a definition.