Cassi Namoda’s painterly worlds attest to ancestral memory-keeping, scenes of oceanic livelihood and matrilineal stewardship, chronicling lines of faith and intergenerational transfer. Shaped by Luso-African historical narratives and mythologies, Namoda has immersed herself in the daily life and stories of ancient coastal cities across Mozambique, Kenya and South Africa. Although self-taught, she draws on histories of art making, building upon Fauvist aesthetic methods through African diasporic subjecthood. The painting series ‘Carapau in the deep abyss’ (2024) depicts both acts of labour and scenes of motherhood along the shoreline in an array of pink and orange flourishes, dark sienna and ochres. An important motif is the horse mackerel [carapau in Portuguese], which symbolises the rationing of food during wartime, civil unrest and migration in Mozambique. Namoda’s paintings foreground practices of sustenance and replenishment amidst unfolding human violence and climate emergency. Why such a journey devoid of return (2021–2022) turns a dhow sail into a gestural canvas that appears as a symbol of integrated oceanic memory and seafaring in the Swahili Seas.