Often applying his imagination to flattened cardboard boxes (Untitled Series,2013), Boua overlays acrylic and tar, before tearing, scratching and marking the surface, as if to erase the memory of an action. These paintings reveal a visual plane disrupted by torn memories, the surface deteriorated to deliberately unsettle the image. The poeticism of Boua’s art is located in the artist’s indifference towards accurate description, as well as his disregard for the formal qualities of painting. On one hand, gestural marks recall the totalising nature of abstract expressionism; only Boua’s paintings are never truly resolved since they are always marred by the impossibility of uniting violence and memory. On the other hand, his cardboard surfaces could be thought of as placards of a revolution in protest against forgetting. Ultimately, they seem to trace the lives that society pretends not to see, the precarious lives of those most vulnerable.