By Robin Okeyo Mbera
In Valley of Peace, I conjure a surreal tableau where the machinery of war is transfigured into the choreography of sport.Two robed figures—one draped in the blue of Israel, the other in the coral hues of Iran—face each other across a volleyball court not of sand or turf, but of woven treaties and olive-branch boundaries.
Suspended mid-air between them is a missile-shaped ball, painted in the colours of both nations, its trajectory no longer one of destruction but of shared rhythm and anticipation.
The court itself is bathed in golden light, a sacred arena of possibility. Its net is not a barrier but a bridge—threads of ancient diplomacy and forgotten dialogue.
Around this ritualistic space stand monumental stone statues, carved in Afro-Cubist style, their eyes closed in solemn reflection.
These ancestral forms do not cheer or condemn; they witness. They remember. They hold space for what could be.
The piece draws from the irony of geopolitical tension—where nations volley missiles across borders, each strike a punctuation of unresolved histories. But here, I propose a different kind of volley: one of play, of mutual recognition, of suspended hostility. The missile becomes a ball. The battlefield becomes a court. The war becomes a game.
This transformation is not naïve; it is deliberate. It asks: What if the energy spent on destruction were redirected toward ritual, rhythm and shared humanity?
The work channels sculptural sensibility into visual storytelling. Though rendered in ink and pigment rather than chisel and stone, the piece retains the weight of carved intention. The missile becomes a ball. The battlefield becomes a court. The war becomes a game. The cosmic backdrop, dotted with stars, reminds us that Earth’s quarrels are but flickers in the vastness of time. And yet, even flickers can illuminate.
At its core, Valley of Peace is a meditation on duality and potential. It explores:
• Conflict as choreography: The gestures of war reimagined as the gestures of sport
• Irony as healing: The absurdity of missile exchanges reframed as a call for play
• Ancestral witnessing: Sculptural forms that evoke African cosmology and Cubist abstraction, grounding the piece in both tradition and futurism
•Fourth-dimensional possibility: The court exists not just in space, but in time—an invitation to imagine alternate futures
RELATED: Why the Petticoat Has Lost Appeal
This work is not a solution. It is a question. A provocation. A sculptural poem digitally illustrated in light and shadow, inviting the viewer to step into the valley—not to fight, but to play.
