In their faces is their nature, the freedom of birth in a wild and blessed land, the obstacles of having to grow up in a wrong and cursed society.

In their gazes are the constraints that rain down on their heads and undermine their skin and souls, rendering vain their efforts to survive with dignity, their hopes and dreams never to be ashamed of.

Yet they resist: those stories are graffiti on the walls, those bodies are symbols.

In their smiles, in their tears, in their gestures, there is the truth of Africa.

Ibrahim Rashid Otieno, a young and talented photographer from Nairobi, lives and documents that crude, sometimes unbearable truth every day, giving us portraits with his art that, to paraphrase Fabrizio De Andrè, give life a drop of splendour, of humanity.

The artist, who grew up in the capital's slums, has arrived in Italy, and precisely in Mesagne, in the province of Brindisi, to inaugurate his personal exhibition entitled ‘Kenya - Africa. Faces, Glimpses and Hopes of a People', which displays no less than 46 works by the Kenyan author. The exhibition will be held from tomorrow, Friday 6 December, with inauguration at 7pm, in the church of Sant'Anna in Piazza Orsini del Balzo in Mesagne.

His journey and the event were made possible thanks to Antonio Ligorio, a sensitive and passionate visitor to Kenya and supporter of social projects in the Deep Sea slum, to which the proceeds from the works sold are destined, the La Manovella Association, sponsored by the Municipality of Mesagne, and with the support of the Omega Diagnostic Centre, Devicienti Multi-Specialist Medical Centre and the Studio 95 advertising agency. With the indispensable help of the Still I Rise organisation with which Otieno has been collaborating for some time.