- Christine Bolahau
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- They Tried to Raise Me Human
They Tried to Raise Me Human (2026) Original Acrylic Painting by Christine Bolahau
80 x 100 x 2cm (unframed)
£1,113.38
Original artwork description
This work speaks about the attempt to make someone “normal.” About upbringing, discipline, social roles, gender, family. About the long process of domesticating otherness.
The oversized blue shirt resembles a uniform — a symbol of the systems the figure was expected to fit into. The bright orange trousers, in contrast, become an eruption of inner life: desire, shame, defiance, sexuality, individuality.
The title, They Tried to Raise Me Human, is not about literal inhumanity. It reflects the experience of growing up under constant pressure to conform — how to sit, how to speak, how to behave, how to become acceptable to others. Yet beneath every layer of adaptation, something remains untouched: soft, strange, untamed.
The figure does not appear broken. It has survived the attempt to be “fixed” and remained itself.
The painting exists in a space between vulnerability and resistance, intimacy and alienation. There is a stillness inside it — the silence that comes after conflict, when the expectations of others no longer hold power.
It is a portrait of a being that never became human in the way the world demanded.
Materials used:
Acrylic on canvas
Details:
- Acrylic painting on Canvas
- One of a kind artwork
- Size: 80 x 100 x 2cm (unframed)
- Signed certificate of authenticity
- Style: Surrealistic
- Subject: Animals and birds
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Original artwork description
This work speaks about the attempt to make someone “normal.” About upbringing, discipline, social roles, gender, family. About the long process of domesticating otherness.
The oversized blue shirt resembles a uniform — a symbol of the systems the figure was expected to fit into. The bright orange trousers, in contrast, become an eruption of inner life: desire, shame, defiance, sexuality, individuality.
The title, They Tried to Raise Me Human, is not about literal inhumanity. It reflects the experience of growing up under constant pressure to conform — how to sit, how to speak, how to behave, how to become acceptable to others. Yet beneath every layer of adaptation, something remains untouched: soft, strange, untamed.
The figure does not appear broken. It has survived the attempt to be “fixed” and remained itself.
The painting exists in a space between vulnerability and resistance, intimacy and alienation. There is a stillness inside it — the silence that comes after conflict, when the expectations of others no longer hold power.
It is a portrait of a being that never became human in the way the world demanded.
Materials used:
Acrylic on canvas
Details:
- Acrylic painting on Canvas
- One of a kind artwork
- Size: 80 x 100 x 2cm (unframed)
- Signed certificate of authenticity
- Style: Surrealistic
- Subject: Animals and birds
