Raised by his grandmother in a West African village,  Alex Akuete spent his earliest years witnessing rituals that shaped his artistic consciousness. Animal offerings, harvested crops, and prepared foods were laid before family-built shrines and left to decay with worms, ants, and flies gathering as signs that the gods had come to claim their due. These vivid scenes, both unsettling and sacred, formed his first and most enduring source of inspiration. In The Sacrifice Series, Akuete revisits these memories through a visceral visual language. Using stark blacks and whites, deepened colors reminiscent of darkened blood, and textures that suggest melting flesh, he reconstructs the atmosphere of the shrine without attempting to replicate its unmistakable smell. An odor he recalls as both horrible and strangely soothing. The works evoke the charged presence he once felt while staring at the shrine, capturing the tension between fear, reverence, and the unseen forces that shaped his childhood world.