“Painting was the miracle, the final act of defiance through which I exorcised the pain and reclaimed my sense of place, my moral compass, and my love for life,” wrote the late Eritrean-born artist Ficre Ghebreyesus, who fled his country at 16 to seek asylum in Sudan, Italy, and Germany before arriving in the United States. To pay the bills and raise a family he worked as chef at the restaurant he opened in New Haven, Caffe Adulis. But he also took classes in painting at the Yale School of Art. Ghebreyesus’s works have been described as “dreamy,” yet their palette is vibrant and the delicate images vivid. This virtual show contains a selection of Ghebreyesus’s paintings, as well as an in-depth talk about the artist by his widow, the poet Elizabeth Alexander. —E.C.