On Monday, Maya decides to spend some time in the school library. She enjoys drawing, but she also enjoys looking at paintings and discovering the stories hidden behind them. As she flips through an art book, one image immediately catches her attention. It is the portrait of a young woman with a calm and mysterious expression. Beneath it appears a simple title: Tutu. Maya studies the reproduction for several minutes. There is something about that gaze that she finds impossible to explain. She does not know exactly what it is, but she feels curious.

She then remembers the conversation they had a few days earlier at Constance’s grandmother’s house. Daniel had talked about Nigeria, Yoruba culture and the importance of names and traditions in his country. Maya continues reading. She discovers that Tutu is probably the most famous painting in Nigeria. Its creator was Ben Enwonwu, considered one of the most important African artists of the twentieth century. The painting portrays a Yoruba princess and was created in the 1970s.

The story becomes even more interesting when she reaches the next paragraph: the painting disappeared for decades, and for a long time, nobody knew where it was, until something extraordinary happened. In 2017, it reappeared almost miraculously in an English house. The story seems more like a novel than an art book.

She takes out her laptop and starts researching online. While reading new articles, she eats a little apple and drinks a cup of camomile tea that she bought in the school cafeteria. The more she discovers, the more fascinated she becomes. Anyone could walk past that painting and see it simply as the portrait of an elegant young woman. However, behind the artwork lies a story of disappearances, journeys, culture and memory. She then finds a quotation by Albert Camus and immediately writes it down in her notebook: “If the world were clear, art would not exist.”

She cannot take her eyes off the painting because there is something she still does not understand. There must be some kind of story hidden behind that gaze. When classes finish, she runs to find Daniel and shows him a photograph of the painting on her phone. Daniel smiles as soon as he sees it. He immediately recognises the painting and the Yoruba context from which it comes. Then he explains a few things Maya did not know. He tells her that the model was a Yoruba princess and that the painting became an important symbol for many Nigerians.

Maya listens carefully, feeling that art can bring us closer to people who lived far away, in another time and in another culture, and that it can do so better than any history book. When she returns home that afternoon, she opens her sketchbook. For the first time in several days, she knows exactly what she wants to paint.