Title: “Kartel, The Black Star” 2023

Medium: Digital Art

Dimensions: 36 x 48 inches

Artists: Femi Kayede and Anthony B. Adeaba

Description: 

In“Kartel, The Black Star,” Kingston’s lyrical outlaw meets Accra’s sacred plaza. Vybz Kartel, the self-proclaimed World Boss, is superimposed with haunting elegance onto Ghana’s Black Star Square—the site of independence, protest, pride, and prophecy. This is not a glamorized depiction of the artist, nor a touristy rendering of the square. It is a clash and communion. A site of ideological thunder.

The digital brushwork pulsates with tension—rigid lines of architecture disrupted by Kartel’s volatile energy. His figure emerges from the square like a spectral flame, flickering between myth and man, between incarceration and immortality. The Black Star above him, Ghana’s emblem of Pan-African unity, takes on new meaning as it shines down on an artist who himself has defied the gravity of his circumstances to become a cultural beacon.

This piece explores what it means to be iconic in Black spaces. It interrogates fame, nationalism, and the radical potency of storytelling through song. Through layered symbolism, the work asks: What does it mean for a man from Portmore to be metaphorically canonized in the Square of Independence? Is Kartel a symbol of resistance, rebellion, or renaissance?