Nairobi Contemporary | Edition 6 | 2020

Edition 6 | 2020

Justice for Yasin Moyo - Graffiti mural by Swift9, painted in Yasin’s hood of Kiamaiko, Huruma, Nairobi. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Editorial “I have learnt that Art speaks, and I resolved to use the only means within my reach to preach a message of peace during the 2007 post poll violence; a brush and paint.” – Solomon Muyundo aka Solo 7 Welcome to the sixth edition of Nairobi Contemporary, a critical artist led platform commentating and contributing to the discourse of the regional art practice. It is a collaborative project formulated by like-minded individuals with a common goal of promoting public appreciation and advancing the study of modern & contemporary Kenyan art, both locally and internationally by continuing informative and critical discourse.

This edition has come during the global COVID-19 pandemic, which has had a sudden and substantial impact on our lives and on not only the local art scene, but also the global arts landscape. Alongside our regular features, this edition speaks to this issue - highlighting the immediate effect COVID-19 has had on artists and their practice, how artists have taken a creative approach to fighting the spread of the virus, and what might be the longer lasting implication of this pandemic. In Nairobi, the imposed curfew and heightened security measures (related to COVID-19) has seen a fresh wave of police brutality and an increase in extrajudicial killings – including the killing of 13 year-old Yasin Moyo, who was shot by a police officer when he was on his balcony during curfew in Mathare, Nairobi. Parallels have been made between the police brutality in Kenya and that against black people in America – brought to global attention through the public killing of George Floyd on 25 May 2020.

As Editors of Nairobi Contemporary, we want to express our gratitude and admiration to all those who fight against systematic police brutality and we stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and those in pursuit of racial justice.

It is our hope that NC remains relevant while informing & entertaining you and we are excited to roll out the sixth edition.

Thank you, Editors Craig Halliday | Ogonga Thom Design Ndeithi Kariuki Printing The Wandering Consultant Contributors Kui Wachira | Mbuthia Maina | Donald Maingi | Carrey Francis Ronjey Syowia Kyambi | Jesse Mpango | Matt Kayem | Dominic Muwanguzi Peterson Kamwathi | Neo Sinoxolo Musangi | Johan Lofquist All correspondence should be addressed to: editor.nairobi.contemporary@gmail.com

Contents 1.

Cover Artwork (Un)Covering by Onyis Martin – Photo courtesy the artist

4.

Maasai Mbili Artists’ Collective’s Response to COVID-19 Mbuthia Maina

6.

Creative Dissonance of the Post COVID-19 Anthropocene: Unveiling Mapambano /Struggles Within Kenyan Art Donald Maingi

8.

Artists’ Perspectives on Re-envisioning the Post Coronavirus World Carrey Francis Ronjey

10.

Becoming Kaspale Syowia Kyambi

12.

Syowia Kyambi & the Entanglement of Time, or, Kaspale’s Archive Intrusion Neo Sinoxolo Musangi

14.

Down Memory Lane | Maasai Mbili Artists’ Collective Johan Lofquist

16.

The Auction Catalogue as a Resource for Research: Analysing Circle Art

Agency’s Modern & Contemporary Art Auctions

Craig Halliday

18.

Preliminary Thoughts on Nafasi Art Space’s New Programme for Emerging Artists

Jesse Mpango 19.

Art Writing During the Pandemic Thom Ogonga

20.

A Residency In The Time of Coronavirus Matt Kayem

22.

A Portrait of Conflicting Identity in Collin Sekajugo’s - This is Uganda: C’est l’Ouganda

Dominic Muwanguzi 24.

Dream Kona - A New Public Art Space in Nairobi Peterson Kamwathi

26.

Peterson Kamwathi Interviews TICAH’s Eric Manya and Suzanne Mieko

28.

Opportunities

29.

Event Listing

Maasai Mbili Artists’ Collective’s Response to COVID-19 who had included Otieno Gomba and Kevo in a major international group show in Paris called to say that had been cancelled too.

In March 2020, I visited the Nagenda International Academy of Art and Design (NIAAD) in Uganda with four members of the Maasai Mbili Artists’ Collective to witness the opening of a brand new gallery and to make plans of holding a group exhibition there in October this year. By that time, the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) was spreading from China and making serious advances in for instance, Italy and Iran. The week we left Nairobi, only a handful of COVID-19 cases had been confirmed in Kenya (all travelers from abroad) and not a single one in Uganda.

As our bus snaked through Kampala traffic the next morning, we saw a young Chinese man get grossly overcharged by a boda boda rider while other riders bluntly

into a dusk to dawn curfew, Uganda fell into almost total lockdown.

Tanzania, on the other hand, chose to ignore the pandemic and continued life as usual even allowing churches and mosques to run.

refused to carry him. Our very first COVID-19 related incidence. The second happened a week later as we raced across Kampala to catch the night bus back to Nairobi. We saw hundreds of people ganging up on a Chinese couple demanding they leave town immediately.

The leaders of the group all wore surgical masks. At customs, luggage checking was extra strict and we filled out additional forms.

Temperatures were taken.

About a week into the first curfew, the infection rates were rising steadily. We began to accept that the virus was here to stay and that we were going to have to learn how to live with it. Even a partial lockdown bites hard. The ‘new normal’ for artists has been especially excruciating. The Maasai Mbili (M2) group exhibition at Seyna Art Gallery (NIAAD) was quickly suspended; the Italian curator and his partner were marooned in Uganda for a long while when airports were closed. Kevo Stero’s installation Obange - Mengi Sumu, for which I was curator, that was to open in the first week of April at the Goethe-Institut (Nairobi) wasn’t postponed but was cancelled.

Serubiri Moses, the Ugandan curator

Once back in Kibera we all entered various levels of self-isolation. The Kenyan government soon started issuing daily reports complete with safety guidelines. It shut down airports to enforce travel restrictions and closed schools, churches and non-essential businesses. While in Kenya we fell

Murals and stencils are easily the most effective medium to disseminate information in slum settlements.

4

In response to the worldwide outbreak of COVID-19 and to the rising number of infections in Kenya, at the start of April, the Maasai Mbili Artists’ Collective initiated a community sensitization programme. These artists know Kibera well and therefore realized how catastrophic a serious outbreak of COVID-19 there could be. Maintaining social distance for instance, is almost impossible in slum settlement conditions where people live together in cramped tiny homes with little ventilation.

It is difficult to make people stay indoors as many in Kibera live hand-to-mouth, from day-to-day and must work daily just to feed their families. This sometimes entails travelling across the city either by foot or taking crowded public transport thus heightening exposure to the virus. Access to clean water is suspect making it difficult to hand wash regularly. A large proportion of people in slums have underlying health conditions such as HIV, TB as well as common non-communicable ailments such as cancer, hypertension and diabetes that increase their risk of developing severe COVID-19.

Some of the activities M2 have embarked on include making and distributing hand washing detergent to the community, painting COVID-19 themed murals in public spaces, online research and social media campaigns, design and distribution of face masks and gloves to the public, the distribution of a weekly nutrition pack for artists of the collective and their families, film and video screenings, production of COVID-19 related music, digital photography and video, as well as support to 50 kids at Mama Pamela’s Paradise Children’s Rescue Centre.

The M2 COVID-19 response programme was initiated by Kevo Stero and Ronald Ronnics, who have previously been involved with the Canadian non-profit organization ‘TheGreatGathering.org’. Other artists involved are: Mbuthia Maina, James Dundi Obat, Otieno Gomba, Anitah Kavochy, Defere Guta, Xavier Lee Makokha, Fabian Sakwa, Alfayo Odongo, Sharon Akinyi, Vincent Masinde and Joakin Kwaru. The programme has covered the areas of: Kianda village, DC, Makina, Toi Market, Fort Jesus, Olympic, and Soweto West. It is not clear when this work will end and possibilities for extension are endless funding allowing. At the moment, funds are raised through sale of M2 artwork.

Murals and stencils are easily the most effective medium to disseminate information in slum settlements. Firstly, they are large and can be enjoyed by many from a distance. They are bold and colourful in-your-face statements that are impossible to miss. They are made in collaboration with members of the community for whom they are intended for. Since they are up against the wall away from human contact, they work better than materials that are handed out such as fliers. They have more symbols than text, which settles issues of literacy levels.

The disruptions caused by COVID-19 could easily have bred confusion and distress to the M2 community if the Collective had not had years of experience making community art in response to crises. During Kenya’s 2007/8 political violence for instance, M2 artists undertook a comprehensive public art campaign in Kibera. For months on end, there was no work, no school, and no business in Kibera. Kids would hang around the studio, many a time, taking refuge from the teargas of the GSU police and the ensuing stampedes. It was only natural that kids would start to draw - first with chalk and charcoal, then with pencils and crayons and anything else they could lay their hands on.

When walls around the studio were all painted, the kids and artists soon extended the art to the walls of ruined businesses all along Kibera Drive. The press started to describe the work as the ‘state of the art museum in the ruins’. Over the years, using video, photography, fashion design, painting, stenciling and printing, M2 have found ways to react to community aspirations in projects such as: Nyumba Kumi, Jobless Corner Campus, Tibiwa na Tiba, Chokora Wear, Pets of Kibera, Conversations in Silence, Kibera Bridges of Peace, Piss Erections and M2 Band.

Consequently, their reaction to the COVID-19 crisis has been immediate and effective. Community reaction and collaboration has been overwhelming. Members of the public have helped to prime the walls and design the pictures. Responsible members of the public have taken over the manufacture, packing and distribution of free soap.

Shofco in Kibera and TibaNiSisi in Mathare are valiantly working to protect their communities.

The Kenyan president has continuously announced extensions of the curfew and there’s a smattering of public mass testing especially in the slums but not anywhere near enough. There’s not enough mask wearing. Pubs are closed except for take-aways but restaurants are still open and people sit as before - not well distanced. We cannot participate in normal funeral rituals because gatherings and travel are prevented.

Are these the signs of the times, one wonders. Whatever happens, Maasai Mbili Artists’ Collective will continue with COVID-19 community sensitization not least because of increased support from individuals and institutions but also due to the overwhelming support from the local community and from online supporters.

It is not easy to determine how the threat of this virus will continue to impact society. Daily numbers by the Kenyan Ministry of Health officials as well as those from neighbouring countries are treated with much suspicion. NGOs like

Mbuthia Maina is an artist, curator and art writer who lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya.

He is a member of Maasai Mbili Artists’ Collective, as well as Naijographia, a drifting curatorial, artist writing practise that takes Nairobi as its subject.

Photo Credit: Page 4: Johan Lofquist Masai Mbili artists’ collective pose in front of the mural.

Page 5: Mbuthia Maina Joachim Kwaru working on the mural.

5

Creative Dissonance of the Post COVID-19 Anthropocene: Unveiling Mapambano (Struggles) Within Kenyan Art In recent months, COVID-19, a new fatal and exceptional type of Coronavirus, has caused many deaths and starkly revealed not only governments’ ineptitudes but also competences in responding to this global health crisis. Emerging in Wuhan (China) late in 2019, cases of COVID-19 in Kenya were first reported in March 2020. The news of this pandemic silenced a disturbing political climate that was regurgitating over the 2022 General Election, with the principal opposition leader, Raila Odinga, having negotiated with the already divided government a truce and political handshake under the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI). Having formulated his populist rally cry “No One can Stop Reggae” as an expected tide within Kenyan politics, it has now become apparently complicated

by the arrival of COVID-19. Kenyan populism has had to contend with the dynamic difficulty of re-translating social distancing as a future norm as the Government traces, tracks and mandatorily places people suspected to have contracted Coronavirus under its designated quarantine facilities.

What is emergent therefore is an essential revamp of populist governmentality to remodel new ways of controlling people amidst this global pandemic. COVID-19’s rise is at a period most scientists characterise as the world’s new geologic epoch of the Anthropocene.

Or, in other words, because of the permanent change human beings have done to this planet we are now living in ‘the age of man’.

critically address the challenges that COVID-19 poses to man’s existential crisis. They will undoubtedly confront what art historians have regarded as the seemingly aesthetic encounter between art and the Anthropocene to reveal man’s ravaging impact upon the planet - in terms of his use of fossil fuels as energy, his industrialisation of agriculture, his appetite for wars and social conflict. The COVID-19 pandemic complicates this growing appetite by redrawing inherent power imbalances to reveal the interdependent health patterns of the 21st century humans pockmarked by their own anthropocentric existential crisis. Hence, the COVID-19 pandemic redraws the challenges facing the age of man, altering the world’s economy, politics and capacities to deal with future global pandemics. These dynamics will undoubtedly alter numerous public spheres for contemporary art and how it becomes produced, exhibited, commodified and consumed within art institutions. Such critical thoughts have inspired my rethinking of the Mapambano (struggles) that Kenyan artists will face in addressing this globally interconnected and already altered contemporary art landscape.

COVID-19, colloquially known in Kenya as Korona - has undergone substantial metaphorical transformations to be known as a ‘living viral organism.’ This “corona” metaphor was recently expounded by Kenyan poet Samuel Mangera in his poem titled ‘Dear Corona Virus. Don’t Be Surprised If You Fail.’ He reveals how Kenyans became challenged by the Government’s stringent lockdown, which included a curfew.

Mangera rightly and imaginatively depicts this statist metaphor in his Facebook post, ‘Usishangae, don’t be surprised, everything fails in Kenya.’ Symbolising his rhetorical aversion of patriotism, he adds, ‘Kenya is not excited to host coronavirus’ as the Government was earnestly searching for quarantine escapees - arrested at a bar a week earlier – revealing that quarantine centres provide an ill-affordable luxury.

Artists globally are becoming accustomed with how best to

COVID-19 has come to embody the lurid disease metaphor as the pandemic that can decimate a population. One that requires the consolidation of a patriotic nationalist response in an already disquieted population, re-living what can be equated to Meja Mwangi’s postcolonial disillusionment depicted in his novel, Kill me Quick. Not least, because past political upheavals have made population control under ‘forced/mandatory quarantine’ measures to become misinterpreted as bitter political wrangles for political power. Yet, COVID-19’s underlying disease metaphor has become layered with the State’s metaphorical constructs of social control thereby facing the backlash of Kenyan human rights groups. Kenyan journalists have had to re-characterise COVID-19 as a part of a national historical narrative that shaped Kenya’s past crises such as coups and poll clashes. This has, however, indirectly conceded to the impudent fact that controlling Kenyans reminds them of the State’s past authoritarianism. These measures are being undertaken at a time when Kenyans were still mourning the death of former President Daniel arap Moi, whose punitive and populist KANU regime metaphorically redefined as the Nyayo philosophy purified ethnic politics

1.

6

Eyder Peralta, ‘College Student Wonders: In Hardcore Kenya, Is COVID-19 Lockdown Needed?’ NPR, < https://www.npr.org/2020/03/25/821285157/ college-student-wonders-in-hardcore-kenya-is-covid-19-lockdownneeded?t=1589220833216> Accessed on 27th March 2020.

as ‘an instrument in the inherent goodness of man.’ An ethno-political doctrine that socially engineered Kenyans to follow the footsteps of the nation’s father to avoid social disorder and collective calamity.

Such factors continue to be policed within the incubatory viral stage of this new disease, COVID-19. A matter that has inspired Maasai Mbili artists, Kevo Stero and Tola’s recent video of two Kenyans arguing in what comes across as Mandarin while the two artists frantically dance to an adaptation of the Italian protest folk song, Bella ciao or ‘Goodbye beautiful.’ This is a popular hit that was originally sang by mondina women paddy workers of the late 19th century, while contesting the hard conditions in the Northern Italy paddy fields.

The dance however signalled to me the viral pandemic’s problematic descent into the conceptual politics recently evoked by Kenyan artist Michael Soi in his significant body of work ‘China Loves Africa’ inspired by the contested ‘misrepresentation’ of the country by Chinese artists in both the 2013 and 2015 Venice Biennale. A significant step in the wrong direction that was undertaken at a time when the current government rejuvenated its Chinese-built standard gauge railway (SGR) in what most critics saw as the country’s most expensive project since independence.

Although the president unveiled stamps acknowledging this fete, he also noted that ‘viral’ corruption was plaguing the nation’s future economic progress. Such meandering of un-anticipated connections in meaning, have come to reshape and re-wire public understandings. Valiantly depicted in new music by King Kaka’s debut hit, Wajinga Nyinyi (You Fools), which recently birthed conversational pieces by such

2.

3.

popular musicians, Teardrops poet, Willie Oeba, Shanki & Evansquez as well as Story za Kapedo.

Creating thickened meanings that are undoubtedly invoking new metaphorical meanings to the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya.

emerging epidemics led Kyambi and Muriuki to reconstruct a new conceptual artistic lens coupled by their re-discovery of localised meanings surrounding their use of protective equipment as the space of encounter between tradition and modern epidemiology.

Where local victims labelled and ascribed new meanings through such understandings as ‘mosquito nets talk at night.’ In this conflation of meanings under the disease metaphor, catastrophe attains different humanised meanings. As artists participating in the 2004 Wasanii International Art Workshop discovered in a residency programme that creatively transformed artists’ collaborative perceptions of the living past post-emancipation struggles, deeply ingrained past understandings are re-clothed by everyday metaphors in the archival evanescence of everyday life in Lamu. Kenyan artists will need to devise alternative programs to deal with local metaphorical delimitation of emerging national and global pandemics. Hence, it could be anticipated that new linguistic and conceptual landscape of creative dissonance will breed a new pertinent site for producing, interrogating, curating and contesting contemporary art.

Artists could be envisaging a dramatic re-conceptualization of such evolving popular Mapambano (struggles) in response to the global anticipation of the post-COVID-19 age of man, whom scientists ideally imagine as occupying a particular ‘herd immunity.’ In retroactively envisioning this herd immunity as a metaphorical build-up of a significant body of immune people, it remains critical to perhaps anticipate a body politic resistant to the spread of this contagious disease - in its metaphorical sense.

Artists will have to learn to deal with what Cameroonian artist Joël Mpah Dooh characterised in his 2005 first solo exhibition in Kenya as the melancholic body language of the ‘beauty of sadness.’ Not merely a depiction of the ‘beauty of sadness’ as an aesthetic concept, but an anticipation of the resilient creative engagement of fluid emergent localised myths, metaphors and meanings that surround new illnesses, national crisis, epidemics and global pandemics. The sort that in the past inspired artists Peterson Kamwathi, Jimmi Ogonga, Richard Kimathi, Joseph Bertiers, Sane Wadu, Jak Katarikawe, Sebastian Kiarie, Evanson Kangethe and Michael Musyoka amongst many others to conceptually redraw people-inspired power metaphors.

Donald Maingi is a Kenyan scholar. He completed his bachelor and master degrees at Kenyatta University and attained his PhD at Birkbeck College, University of London, where he produced new research titled ‘Constructing and Deconstructing a Nation: The Emergence of Contemporary Kenyan Art (1963-1993).’ Donald is currently transforming his dissertation into a book. He continues to produce new research on Art and Transitional Justice in Kenya. He currently consults at the British, Red Cross.

I am increasingly drawn to Syowia Kyambi and James Muriuki’s 2013 conceptual art project at KEMRI under a Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kilifi.

The ambivalence of dealing with mixed local perceptions towards

Photo Credit: James Muriuki

Krishan Gautama, ‘What the Nyayo Philosophy Means,’ Daily Nation, 2nd January 1981, p. 6.

Ibid.

Page 6: “Conjured Paths”, James Muriuki & Syowia Kyambi, 2012.

7

Artists’ Perspectives on Re-envisioning The Post Coronavirus World Art exhibitions, studio visits, Art Fairs and global cultural events have been cancelled. Like all other aspects of life, the art scene has not been spared by the Coronavirus crisis that has presumably rendered permanent changes to life as we know it. There has been speculation over further effects not limited to, but including global financial meltdowns, continued restriction of movement, and forever changed human interactions. The future remains more puzzling than ever before. As architects and transcribers of life, artists have yet again been dealt a seemingly random task to decode one of the most tangible global crises. Carrey Francis Ronjey spoke to some artists during these ‘new normal’ times and they shared how they envision the post-Coronavirus world.

He posed questions regarding their general artistic practice, whether the COVID-19 pandemic had affected them - directly or indirectly? And how differently they reimagined the art scene once the immediate crisis is over?

Peterson Kamwathi I have an interest in structure especially those that involve community and society. These structures might be codes of conducts, legislations, media and collective cultural rituals and expressions. For me, the principal embodiment of community is groupings i.e. crowds and queues. A lot of my work has for some time now been an exploration of the optics, anatomy and potential symbolisms.

I live outside the limits of the boundaries that the government have set around Nairobi, so I cannot easily access my studio at the GoDown Art Centre. I am back to using the garage at my house

as my primary space which has always served me well. The limited access, isolation and the state of current economy means that I have to prioritize and improvise. In a certain I way, I now realize that I might be able to function with less. Possibly, there may be some enlightenment lurking there. I am bemused by the tension exhibited in some of the hashtags that have emerged during this pandemic, especially hashtag “AloneTogether”.

Post-COVID-19, I feel like the work would still have moved onto the online space regardless of the virus. This crisis has only catalysed that process (in a big way), which may turn it into the new normal. However, I am optimistic that galleries and exhibition halls will still be a mainstay of artistic practice post the crisis.

Stacey Gillian

Everything is in flux so that is difficult to determine at this point how post-Covid shall be. One of the aspects of the art scene that has been enhanced is the place of social media as an addition or extension to spaces where we interact collectively. Instagram Live as an example has come to the fore as a connector and meeting point. An example of this is Wambui Kamiru-Colloymore’s Instagram Live conversations with artists within her network. The experience may not be the same as direct human contact, but it goes a long way especially in the current atmosphere of isolation.

I am aware though of the downside whereby this access requires some aptitude, comes at a cost and is not as open, communal and democratic as we might imagine.

My art is continuous and biographical in nature, meaning that I document day-to-day situations

opportunity to review my work and self-expression from a different perspective. I’ve only rekindled my painting skills while in lockdown which is an exciting dimension to my pre-existing media. It has generally been a positive impact and I’m waiting to see how the world interacts with the new dimensions.

I think the pandemic has flipped everything around and offered us a new global perspective to life.

For once, the human race has been united by tragedy. Henceforth, I wish to see less individualism and more collaboration, as well as

Larry Kim I am an artist at Kuona Artists’ Collective. At the moment, my main medium is acrylic on canvas and I am primarily working with the human figure exploring human experiences like death, love, science et cetera.

and events around my life with references to the past, present and cultural heritage. I materialise this through photographic stills, performances, installations, processed video and most recently, painting. I am interested in themes related to gender, identity, spirituality and cultural mysticism-both in the present and in the past. The works are surreal, metaphorical and symbolic.

My biggest challenge is that people can’t have personal interaction with the work as I only post online now. I am sceptical about digital exhibitions because the art work loses some if its energy when viewed only as photographs.

The current global situation has served me food for thought; an

8

structural fluidity on organisational and institutional levels. I hope that this would lead to the eventual end of divisional elements such as race, class and borders.

Longinos Nangila I make art because I feel it is necessary to challenge myself at how I see and feel about things.

The work is therefore a physical manifestation of these meditative processes. I work with a range of

materials and themes - painting, mixed media, installations and video. My themes have ranged from fashion, migration and identity while the current work interrogates the relationship between space and light, digging into what a space actually is.

At the height of the COVID-19 spread in Europe, I was doing my residency program in Dubai.

This would have culminated in an exhibition at the Art Dubai 2020 Fair. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen as business closed world over including Dubai. Upon return to Nairobi, I had to self-quarantine for two weeks after which I haven’t been in a good mental space to create any work. I’m also (consciously) avoiding creating work influenced by the current events.

whole reset has prompted some readjustments; work flow is greatly interrupted and it’s hard to tell when everything will go back to “normal” despite the little readjustments to open up businesses.

Moving forward, it would be nice to have better policies especially in regard to visual artists’ welfare during such times when we are not able to make direct sales from shows and open studios.

Both artists and galleries should leverage more on digital presence should a similar crisis ever reoccur.

I believe digital presence widens the scope as well as interactions.

Cover image: (Un)Covering by Onyis Martin, image courtesy of the artist.

Many galleries and event producers are rethinking exhibitions and gatherings. We have seen a rise in the use of virtual reality for exhibitions and art fairs.

Taabu E. Munyoki Art is an expression of my experiences having been born and raised in the urban space. I use different media to create works that explore social issues and dynamics of human relationships.

Prior to the crisis, I was part of two running exhibitions that had to close down indefinitely following the lockdowns that were introduced to curb the spread of the virus. As a young artist relying on exhibitions for sustainability, cancellation of public gatherings has come with a huge impact. Working from home has its challenges especially regarding space, which has limited the sizes of work I would normally produce. The

Ronjey Carrey Francis is a drummer that became other things. He is the founder of Nairobi Underground and is currently unsettled in East Africa.

Photo Credits: Stacey Gillian Abe Page 8: “Indigogo”, 2018.

Many galleries and event producers are rethinking exhibitions and gatherings.

We have seen a rise in the use of virtual reality for exhibitions and art fairs.

9

Becoming Kaspale during Moi’s regime has fed my recent work. There are two things at play here – one is being raised in a dictatorship, the other growing up in a privileged space carrying a white German and a black Kenyan heritage of parents born during World War II and growing up in colonial times, raised during the Emergency era.

These elements play themselves out in various forms in my practice.

Many ask, ‘what is it you do when you perform? How do you do it? How do you become Kaspale?’ A form of internal shedding takes place; the centre of me empties, making space for the energy of the Other.

This happens gradually, most often during the walk to the place where I will be performing. Sometimes this starts the night before, sometimes several days before. It’s a slow and quiet process. It is initiated the moment I start making practical plans to get into character. As I am stirring and preparing the red ochre, the emptiness in the centre of me, which was forming, becomes a clearly defined space within my core. I feel the familiar parts of me slip away temporarily, making room for another energy. I more clearly feel my breath, I become more attuned to the sensations on my skin, my ears search for rhythms around me to hold on to, patterns and rhythms become important anchors for my body and my energy.

The rhythm of stirring the red ochre, the sound and action of the spoon turning as the water is added creates a rhythmic atmosphere in my body, making room for me to entertain the joker within. The process of painting my fingernails starts. The repetition of the action is soothing and my perception of time becomes heightened. Anxiety increases as I apply the ochre on my skin, and the earlier emptiness,

A story my mother told me stuck with me. I don’t remember it myself; I was too young. I ran into my parent’s bedroom saying “bose manner machen bang bang”. It was 1982. We lived next to Kenyatta Market behind Mbagathi Way, the street that the attempted Kenyan coup d’état was fought. I was three at the time and all I said was “bad men doing bang bang.” Moi changed after this. His fear and distrust took over. He became a dictator, a rather heartless, thoroughly feared, oppressive leader. A scary guy.

People still hesitate when speaking about him. He died on the 4th of February 2020 at the age of ninetyfive. The media spoke about him with jubilation, his violence dumbed down, washed out of the narrative.

In death, we all speak too kindly about the deceased. He is behind the Nyayo philosophy - one guided by the ideology of nationalism wrapped in authoritarianism.

Nyayo means footsteps. Moi is Nyayo House, and in this period the nation walked with footsteps shaking with fear and distrust.

starts to get filled. My body is now open to embrace Kaspale. The final touch of creating the golden mouth is the last moment of full transition into character; once I have the golden mouth, I am Kaspale.

Kaspale is the character I have created and developed over the past two years. In 2018 Kaspale started as an open-ended performance and has developed into other mediums such as photography, collage, and film. Kaspale began as a way to intervene in spaces charged with colonial activities, to call out authority when necessary, and speak up when others cannot.

Where do I come from? Where are we going?

Memories

I remember moments growing up, when the gap between my world and the general Kenyan population merged; such as in 1985, as a 7 year old girl, having to get out of the car and clap for the passing president (Daniel Toroitich arap Moi). It was a strange sensation that I intentionally visualize and work through in my practice. The theme of hierarchies, economic inequalities, racism, oppression, censorship and the need to create sanctuaries as a form of resistance, are distinguishable elements in my work. The terror of growing up

Nyayo House

“Pain belongs to the bearer. You cannot understand my pain.”

Wahinga Wa-Bure (Nyayo House torture survivor).

Nyayo House’s construction started in my birth year 1979 and was completed by 1983. It was, and still is, the place where you got your papers, all the items that indicate who you are legal. The marker that

10

shows you are part of the country; a place of official counting, official inclusion, official permission. The same building was also the torture chamber of the Kenyan government during Moi’s era. You would only go there if you had to. In the eighties and early nineties, people would make large loops around the streets situated near Nyayo House to avoid walking in front of the building.

There are rumours of it shaking, of hearing voices and screams. Nyayo House is a symbol of the oppression of the government beyond the Moi era. It symbolizes how corruption and murder by the government will never have any repercussions.

Victims will not have justice. I wonder what it will take for Kenya’s government to be held accountable for its violations of its own citizens.

Nyayo House is the space Kaspale is now dismantling. Creating the character Kaspale is a methodology I use to create an extension of myself, an extension of what I needed in order to tell stories that are hard for me to tell and hard for others to hear. Kaspale is more than one thing. Kaspale is I, and yet Kaspale is not I. Kaspale’s dismantling is releasing me, Syowia, the person, the mother, the artist, the friend, the lover, to be free of self-censorship, to shed what happens to a person who has lived most of her life in a space where you are afraid to speak up and to speak out, told you do not belong here and that you are not valuable. Kaspale is also something outside of me, Syowia. A character that can speak with the general public, because as an individual it is hard to represent a greater whole, as a creolized character, an extension of myself, an extension of my multitude, it is easier.

Kaspale’s Creolization

“In Creolization you can change, you can be with the Other, you can exchange with the Other while being yourself, you are not one, you

are multiple, and you are yourself.

You are not lost because you are not disjointed because you are multiple.” - Édouard Glissant.

Kaspale’s Creolization is subconsciously connected to my being mixed race. The name Kaspale alludes to this. It originates from both German and Kiswahili language. The word Kasper refers to a popular German character who is a playful trickster and who engages in satire. Various forms of this character are also found in several cultures across the world.

My use of ‘pale’ is influenced by sheng - a mix of Kiswahili with different vernacular languages and English. ‘Pale’ in Kiswahili means over there. It is a very specific there.

A ‘there’ that is nearby, visible, just around, at close proximity. For me, the Sheng element of ‘pale’ is not

unbreakable, surviving due to an ability to morph, to adapt to be fluid, moving soft yet hard, as needed. To exist in a space where you can see the frown of people trying to figure out how did you get here, what are you doing here, if you’re here then what does that mean for me.

And the realization that with this multitude there is permanence. I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, what that makes you is not up to me.

The multitude within Creolization makes Kaspale indispensable.

To use the methodology of creating a Creolized character has assisted me to excavate hidden narratives, to reveal the ugliness in our humanity, and ultimately to heal from the process of my past and hopefully extend this healing to people affected by the country’s collective trauma.

the many layers of violence that underpinned former President Daniel Toroitich arap Moi’s 24-year rule. Through the project Kaspale I seek to claim both the remembering and the telling of this history in ways that are not mediated by a supposed shared national memory.

The origin of Kaspale’s ability to communicate a ‘truthiness’ is rooted in my personal experience of being raised in a violent space of dictatorship which has resulted in both self-censorship and national collective censorship/amnesia which is still being played out and activated to this date, as well as the personal psychological violations which were inadvertently passed on by my parents born in 1936 and 1942 in a world at war, and a world where seeing humans as non-human was the norm. And sadly still is.

Creating the character Kaspale is a methodology I use to create an extension of myself, an extension of what I needed in order to tell stories that are hard for me to tell and hard for others to hear. the Kiswahili definition but instead relates to the English translation of there, which connects to ‘get it — like understand — there’. The ‘pale’ in Kaspale is my own sheng, a mix of who I am, both German and Kenyan. Coherent and incoherent.

The power in this mix is what I embrace with Creolization, how the multitude becomes unbeatable,

Kaspale’s Playground

The development of Kaspale’s Playground came about as a need to engage with Kenya’s postindependence era and a desire to dismantle a symbol of fear and oppression. Revisiting Kenya’s recent history, the work Kaspale’s Playground brings to the fore

Kaspale is also gender fluid; this is one more element that feeds the aesthetics of a multitude. A mix between human and animal, the spirit world and our world, male and female orientation, and a mix of languages in their origins and in the hybridity of language. As Stuart Hall has argued, “…identities are about questions of using the resources of history, language and culture in the process of becoming rather than being: not ‘who we are’ or ‘where we came from’, so much as what we might become, how we have been represented and how that bears on how we might represent ourselves. Identities are therefore constituted within, not outside

11

representation. They relate to the invention of tradition as much as to tradition itself, which they oblige us to read not as an endless reiteration but as ‘the changing same’ (Gilroy, 1994): not the so-called roots but to coming-to-terms-with our ‘routes’.”

Kaspale is becoming, a constant fluidity in the tool of intervention.

A becoming that is constant.

Syowia Kyambi Photo Credits: Kibe Wangunyu & Carl Kühl Page 10 & 11 (above): “Kaspale’s Playground.”

Location: Circle Art Gallery, Kenya.

Page 11 (bottom): Kaspale in the Lecture Room.

Location: MARKK Museum, Germany.

Syowia Kyambi1 And The Entanglement Of Time, Or, Kaspale’s Archive Intrusion other particles within the space. To think with Syowia Kyambi’s new body of work is to find oneself in an entanglement; one that rejects linearity, or situatedness, or permanence, or even a reading of genre. Syowia has built a character— Kaspale— so huge and diverse; to write about the extensive range of form, media and temporalities within which Kaspale comes to be, to live (in) and, travels (through), all at once would be disingenuous.

However, in thinking through Hartman’s historical time as entanglement, I arrive at, and with, Syowia to Kaspale— through entanglement.

Recently, Jada Pinkett Smith, host of the Red Table Talk show and wife to Hollywood star, Will Smith, used the word entanglement. She did not use the more familiar terms such as ‘affair’, ‘cheating’ —or even relationship— in the context of her marriage and its supposed abutting affect. She used entanglement to describe her involvement with rapper, August Alsina. Entanglement, in this way, interestingly enters a social media lexicon in unexpected ways, as laughable, as denialist, as a falsehood and, for some, a truth. Entanglement is, perhaps, one version of truth for Jada and those involved. But where— and how— else might we read (about) entanglement?

Saidiya Hartman, with whom I have been thinking on the transformative nature of narrative, time and temporality, reads historical time as some sort of temporal entanglement.2 Entanglement is a good word. It is a useful word.

Entanglement is as conceptually temporal as it is cognitively physical. It is perhaps even spatial and, in this spatial relationality, is proximity. Entanglement could also signal immobility and containment even as particles and things move within, and outside, of themselves.

Here is a familiar image: A cat caught up in its own mess with a ball of knitting wool. The more the cat moves, the more intricate the web of thread becomes. There is something cyclical in this kind of entangled mess. Quantum entanglement speaks of particles becoming so intricately linked that whatever happens in one particle affects the other, or all

1.

2.

Of Kaspale, Syowia says: Kaspale is the character I have created and developed over the past two years. In 2018 Kaspale started as an open-ended performance and has developed into other mediums such as photography, collage, and film. Kaspale began as a way to intervene in spaces charged with colonial activities (my emphasis). The Kasper’s (Casper’s) [sic] are generally playful tricksters who engage themselves in satire. Various forms of this character is found in several cultures across the world throughout history. Kasperles have the task and ability to call out authority when necessary. They speak up when others cannot.

The range of media through which Kaspale is to be experienced makes this work rather challenging to situate: sometimes embodied as performance and in camera motion, other times lying as an object in a suitcase and yet other times as a still image of person and puppet. Kaspale comes to my mind as an ampersand [&]: standing for; a ligature; and-per-se-and; and, by itself, and. In this incomplete and extending multiplicity of being, I want

Syowia Kyambi describes herself as a multimedia artist of Kenyan and German heritage. Her practice ranges from performanceinstallation (a compound word I use to think through her performance work as both installation and embodiment but at the same time to refer to the afterlife of her performances as installations) to the creation of objects in media as varied as concrete and clay. Objects that are both sculptures and not. Syowia lives somewhere within the imaginary border of Nairobi and Kajiado counties, Kenya.

Hartman, Saidiya and Thora Siemsen (2018). “On working with archives: An interview with writer Saidiya Hartman”. https:// thecreativeindependent.com/people/saidiya-hartman-on-working-with-archives/ Accessed 27 May 2020.

12

to read Kaspale’s entanglement in spatio-temporal worlds as indexing something within, but also beyond, themselves. They are fiction and auto/biography, performance and installation, animal and human, masculine and feminine, the past and the present. Kaspale lives beyond the binaries of gender, the limits of nationalities and national borders, and they wear a Kaunda suit made of mosquito net material.

They also wear glitter on their lips, golden nail polish and ochre.

Kaspale’s fictional embodiment ranges from existing as photo collages and montages; shadow projections; puppet; mask-wearing performer; and as object-insideobject. Kaspale is strange and familiar, far and close, masked and revealed, playful but haunting.

With this work, Syowia travels back and forth in different temporalities.

The present is entangled in a web of multiple pasts evident in archival objects and memories, both individual and supposedly shared but strewn across, nonetheless.

When Kaspale enters Nyayo House; they are travelling through both time and space. Kaspale transports us— those of us who might have lived through the architectural, and other, violences of Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi— to a particular place of pain because we have an emotional proximity to the particular record of the Nyayo House Torture Chambers, and to the mundane state bureaucracy and inefficiency that the building has come to represent as the physical home of Kenya’s Immigration Department. This memory is in many ways corporeal, i.e., it is housed in (our) bodies.

When Kaspale strips and waves the Kenyan flag in protest, the reference is familiar. Their female bodied-ness is located somewhere in Kenya’s history: women stripping across Nairobi for their sons and husbands held by the Moi regime as political prisoners. A voice repeatedly shouts “Wangari… Wangari wa Maathai” as Kyambi takes off the costume, wipes off the glitter make-up and washes off the red ochre. The intensity of

this moment is not so much about assumed anxieties around nudity; performance artists have used their body-material in this way many times before. This particular moment in the performance, it appears to me, is intense because at this point the character morphs into the artist but not quite as yet. While Kaspale had appeared menacing at first, by taking off the things that had made the artist the character, the audience is confronted by a revelation, quite literally. There is a ‘truth’ that is exposed by how situated in Kenya the narrative quickly turns into a reckoning.

the artist’s experiential memories, Kyambi builds a character that embodies memories of her own, those of others as well as those of something that might be seen as the nation. Although this might not be a re-writing and/ or a re-telling of national history, the assemblage of familiar pivotal symbols, such as the Kenyan flag, architectural referencing, and narrative invocation, rely, quite heavily, on an already existing archival record.

Hartman: How do we narrate time? […]

One of the things I think is true, which is a way of thinking about the afterlife of slavery in regard to how we inhabit historical time, is the sense of temporal entanglement, where the past, the present and the future, are not discrete and cut off from one another but rather that we live the simultaneity of that entanglement. This is almost common sense for black folk. How does one narrate that?

While, like public memorialization and experiments in supposed collective memory, Kaspale might not be accountable to the publics they (and the performance) convene, they remain accountable to not only the sets of memories they invoke (both individual and shared) but also to art— as a fictional character based off an experiential object-subject located in a lived temporality. By intruding the archive— Syowia calls this Kaspale’s Archive Intrusion— in the way they do: As a figure among other figures; as a figure in landscape; as a figure in time; as a figure in space, Kaspale is part of a topographical matrix in which they are a point of reference in a tactile relationship with everything around them— in space and in time (Young, 1993).3

The Makonde mask with which Syowia builds a concept-character, and the subsequent exploration of Kaspale’s unearthing is as much of an archival object as it is a cosmology. Kaspale’s mask becomes an embodiment in other worlds other than the one in which, as an object, might be found. The mask is Kaspale’s way of being both as character and performer.

In its reproduction, repurpose and, in some ways, abandonment, Syowia disrupts not only the archive but also the seemingly linear temporalities with/in which archival memory is built. She makes new masks modeled on the ‘original’ mask of the Makonde. While it might have been an ethnographic object found but, mostly stolen, by white explorers of colonial territories beaming with a readiness needing an immediate conquering, this particular mask— like masks are wont to— reveals but conceals. It conceals, from the collector/s a world that he— almost always a ‘he’— can never access but reveals, by its display, a displacement: An out-of-place-ness of ‘ethnographic’ objects in collections across the world. Working with (and from) archives is interesting in this way, and Kyambi is able to pull apart, and reassemble anew from, both distant and more recent pasts. Kyambi’s use of archival material exemplifies an intricate entanglement between the personal and the public. With the occasional slippages between

Again: How does one narrate time? Indeed, how does one narrate entanglement?

Neo Sinoxolo Musangi lives and whines in in Kajiado. They sometimes write about art when they cannot create it. They can be found on Twitter @sinoxolomusangi at 3am every morning.

3.

13

Young, James, E. (1993). The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. New Haven an London: Yale University Press.

Photo Credit: Carl Kühl Page 12: Kaspale in the Lecture Room.

Location: MARKK Museum, Germany.

Down Memory Lane | Maasai Mbili Artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Collective

14

Johan Lofquist is a curious explorer of the great eternal that we all live in.

Photo Credits: Johan Lofquist

15

The Auction Catalogue as a Resource for Research: Analysing Circle Art Agency’s Modern & Contemporary Art Auctions

In Africa and the West, auctions dedicated to contemporary African art have become increasingly common. For example, in London, Bonhams launched its ‘Africa Now’ contemporary art sales in 2009 and in 2017 Sotheby’s started its ‘Modern and Contemporary African Art’ auction. In 2007, Arthouse Contemporary launched in Lagos, specialising in modern and contemporary art from West Africa. The following year, Strauss & Co Fine Art Auction House was established in South Africa. Alongside other developments such as: Cape Town Art Fair (starting in 2012), 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair (that launched in 2013), ART X Lagos and AKAA (which both started in 2016) - these offer evidence of a growing global market for this work.

There have been some impressive sums for contemporary African artists’ work. At Sotheby’s New York, El Anatsui’s ‘Paths to the Okro Farm’ sold for £1.4 million in 2014. In 2018, at Bonhams in London, a 1974 painting titled ‘Tutu’ by the Nigerian artist Ben Enwonwu (1921-1994) sold for £1.2 million.

That said, most of the work making their way to auction houses and art fairs don’t yet command prices similar to artworks sold from other regions of the world. Africa’s art market has plenty of room to grow. However, it is because of this that the African art market represents a new frontier for investors.

In September 2015, the headline of a CNN article stated ‘Looking for an investment? African art is hotter than gold’. In March 2017, the Financial Times printed an article headed ‘Demand is high for contemporary African art’. At the start of 2020 African Business magazine put out the article ‘Africa’s art market takes off as investors pile in’. And, in March 2020 the Economist published an article titled ‘Collectors the world over are buying modern and contemporary art from Africa’. In other words, the contemporary African art market has transformed radically over the past decade.

16

On Friday 6th March 2020, Circle Art Agency held its seventh ‘Modern and Contemporary Art Auction East Africa’. Since its inception in 2013, the auction has been held every year apart from 2016. The auction has become a significant platform for raising the profile of art from the region but also for encouraging the development of an international and local market.

To provide some perspective, thus far, of the 391 lots auctioned 83% sold, with 44% selling for over their estimate. The auction has also been steadily growing over the years - in 2013 the auction had 47 Lots whereas in 2020 there were 70 Lots – and this is set to continue with the introduction of an annual online auction later this year. Local art reporters have enthusiastically written about each auction and, perhaps unsurprisingly, focussed attention on the artworks that went for the highest sums of money.

Whilst such coverage is exciting, in this article attention shifts elsewhere. I provide an alternative perspective to Circle Art Agency’s auctions and seek to achieve this by extrapolating data from each year’s auction catalogue. The reason for choosing this research method is that it presents straightforward data on what, or who, has been represented (or indeed under represented or omitted) over the period that the auctions have taken place. In turn, this data will provide another viewpoint to Circle Art Agency’s auctions and how they contribute a certain narrative of East Africa’s modern and contemporary art market (whether intentionally or otherwise).

To begin this analysis it is worth stating that auction catalogues can be an important source of information for research. They can provide detail on works of art, including provenance information and detailed illustrations and

descriptions. Additionally, they can provide biographical material on artists and can be used to identify what sells. Over time, this information can help track changing trends and tastes. Having said that, one of the primary purposes of an auction catalogue is to act as a marketing tool - aiming to entice buyers and collectors. As such, it is common for auction catalogues to engage in hyperbolic language, whereby claims are exaggerated.

Before presenting statistical data from this research, I first provide an example of what I feel is the hyperbolic language found in Circle Art Agency’s auction catalogues.

At Circle Art Agency’s very first auction in 2013, Lot 1 was a watercolour on paper, titled ‘Christ in the Manger’, by Wanyu Brush.

The work, which came direct from the artist, was described in the following way: ‘Wanyu is best known for his bold, vivid canvases, often depicting scenes of human chaos. This delicate watercolour on paper, painted over 23 years ago, is contrary to his typical style, making it a rare and collectable find.’ Comparable works were put to auction in 2018 (Lot 47) and described as ‘a rare and special find’. Whilst such items may be challenging for the ordinary collector to find by themself (as the majority of Brush’s art works exhibited in Nairobi’s galleries tend to be canvas paintings) they are not rare in the sense that very few exist.

Describing Brush’s work on paper in this way certainly adds value to how they are perceived, and also perhaps the amount of money willing to be paid for them. However, if this text is intended to be read the way that I do – that is, his paintings on paper are rare in the sense that they are not found in large numbers - I suggest it is rather disingenuous.

In the early 1990s Brush created a considerable body of work on paper (of varying sizes and numbering into the hundreds). Importantly, these paintings on paper were not studies for larger canvas works but were, in their own right,

complete artworks that represent a significant moment in this artist’s career. I suggest that by describing them as rare it effectively erases acknowledgement of this body of work created by Wanyu Brush in the early 1990s, which undoubtedly shaped his artistic path.

most prevalent, comprising 62% of all artworks featured in the auctions. Following this is sculpture (13%), work on paper (12% - pen and ink, charcoal, oil pastel, and collage), mixed media (7%), print (3%), and photography (3%).

The period in which these artworks were created stretches from at least the 1950s up to the present era. Over half (56%) of the artworks were created in the twenty-first century – of this, 18% were created in the decade 2000-2009, with 38% created from 2010 onwards.

Artworks produced in the preceding decades are as follows: 1990-1999 (15%), 1980-1989 (6%), 1970-1979 (6%), 1960-1969 (2%), 19501959 (0.25%). Having said that, the date of production for 15% of all artworks was unknown.

Who are the artists that have featured at Circle Art Agency’s auctions? Thus far, there have been 167 different artists whose work has been put to auction. The ten artists whose work has been included most often are: Geoffrey Mukasa (15), Edward Njenga (13), George Lilanga (12), E. S. Tingatinga (10), Charles Sekano (9), Jak Katarikawe (9), Peterson Kamwathi (7), Eli Kyeyune (6), Rosemary Karuga (6), and Sane Wadu (6).

On average, at the time of auction most artists represented were living (81%), whilst those deceased represented 19%. Furthermore, the vast majority of works put to auction were created by male artists (88%).

The auction that included the least amount of work by female artists was in 2014 (8%) and the one with the highest was in 2018 (16%). Of the 167 artists that featured at Circle Art Agency’s auctions, 27 were female, representing 16%.

Circle Art Agency’s Modern and Contemporary Art Auction East Africa represents a momentous milestone for creating further interest in art from the region, at the same time as contributing a tremendous amount to developing a local and international art market.

Through an analysis of Circle Art Agency’s auction catalogues this short article has presented data which goes some way to answering those ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’ and ‘who’ questions. In doing so I have aimed to step back from individual stories about the bidding wars that took place, or the works which sold for well over their estimate, and instead provided statistics which shed light on the broader picture. I suggest this is significant because it reveals potential preferences (whether intended or not) to a certain type of work, period of production, gender, nationality, and the like, which go towards framing understandings of modern and contemporary art, especially when it comes to the market.

Exactly how this might impact the broader narrative of modern and contemporary art, and why (and for who) this matters, is open to further debate, and indeed warrant scrutiny.

The nationalities of the artists represented in Circle Art Agency’s auctions are diverse, comprising: Congolese, Egyptian, Eritrean, Ethiopian, French, Ghanaian, Kenyan, Madagascan, Namibian, Nigerian, Rwandan, Seychellois, South African, Sudanese, Tanzanian, Ugandan, and Zimbabwean. Still, when all auctions are taken into consideration, the majority of artists have been Kenyan (43%), followed by Ugandan (20%), Tanzanian (12%), Sudanese (9%), and Ethiopian (6%). Of note is the inclusion of Nigerian artists in 2018 and 2019 who made up 13% and 8% of all artists represented in those years, respectively.

What about the artworks? In total, 396 artworks have been put up for auction. Painting is by far the

17

Craig Halliday is a PhD candidate at the University of East Anglia, UK. His research looks into the role art can play in creating social change. Prior to this, Craig completed a MA in African Studies, MSc in International Development and has worked and lived in Kenya, Malawi, Myanmar, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Zambia Photo Credit: Circle Art Agency Page 16: Wanyu Brush’s “Christ in the Manger” (1990).

Preliminary Thoughts on Nafasi Art Space’s New Programme for Emerging Artists In 2020, Dar es Salaam’s Nafasi Art Space launched The Academy - an intensive learning programme for emerging artists. It is the first long-form arts course and builds on it systems of learning and skills exchange, developed among Nafasi’s ecosystem of arts practitioners since its founding in 2008. For the 10-month course, the recurring questions are articulated through modules addressing: historical narratives, conceptual development, community engagement, and professionalization in contemporary art practice.

Choosing new artists to join Nafasi’s collective membershipbased space was a process that needed to be approached carefully and thoughtfully. It began with an inception meeting in which the project was introduced to the local arts network in August 2019.

Among those in attendance were – The University of Dar-es-Salaam faculty, members of the National Arts Council, local artists and curators. The collective feedback from this conversation informed the open call and interview sessions that prioritized not only technical ability but also an awareness of community and commitment to inclusion and reciprocity. From over 70 applicants, 14 artists were selected to join Nafasi through its new Academy programme in 2020.

The course began in early February with an introduction to contemporary art within the Tanzanian context provided through conversations with renowned artist and Professor Elias Jengo, former Nafasi Art Space Director Jan Van Esch with artists Amani Abeid and Harriet Kwetukia. There was also a curator-led tour of the National Museum in Dar es Salaam, and a visit to the studio of visual artist Hendrick Lilanga - grandson of the

great George Lilanga (1934–2005) whose legacy Hendrick carries both stylistically and technically.

Outside the Lilanga studio a relative of another artist quietly carried on the legacy of David Herekia Mzuguno (1951-2010) through many meticulously made paintings hung like old clothes for display.

Both David Mzunguno and George Lilanga have been described as masters that carry forward the legacy of the Tingatinga School whose scope and purpose has too often been the work of dissociative accounts of international fame or within local narratives of an arbitrary and shallow preoccupation with the tourist market.

Such binaries are all too familiar.

For Tanzania, fluctuations within political and economic designations of art - spanning colonial ignorance, ethnographic fascination, formal reform, political instrumentalization, and a rapid transition from socialist to capitalist ideology – have situated the relevance of distinct stylists (like Lilanga, Tingatinga, Mzuguno, Jengo, Raza etc) from what they might otherwise have in common - namely their role as inheritors and drivers of the country’s visual identity.

Domincus Makala’s expansive study on the history of visual arts in Tanzania, written for his PhD dissertation at Freie University Berlin, references Italian curator and collector Sarenco making an epiphany out an this very simple observation; In an exchange with Lilanga, Sarenco says: “In order to really understand your paintings, it would be necessary to live in Dar es Salaam and travel those ten kilometres that go from the port to the hill district of SabaSaba.” That art should be in constant dialogue with its environment should not necessitate surprise and it is with this in mind that Julius Nyerere’s prioritization of culture as a vital,

life-giving aspect of society can arguably be best understood. The intention of public initiatives, such as Nyumba ya Sanaa (House of Art) founded in 1979 during Ujamaa, was not to override the preservation role of the already present National Museum but to extended efforts in securing continuous artistic production within the changing priorities of post-colonial modernity.

Nafasi’s role across a decade on in the Dar-es-salaam art scene has been to develop a culture of questioning that spans society, history, culture and identity. The Academy’s visit to see these artists’ works was in order to elicit contemporary readings and interpretations—perhaps the manner in which Mzuguno’s paintings of rural scenes invoked the feel of Dar-es-salaam’s visual order in their rhythm, form and color, or the influence of Lilanga’s Shetani figures on images on the existentialist humor on cartoonist critiques of modern life, themselves an influential factor to urban conceptions of morality The impact of that day may ultimately be measured in how effectively these young artists move beyond chronology and polarities, or popularity and

prestige in approaching their artistic heritage. In the first few months, amidst conversations with a range of established Tanzanian and African artists and curators, what has already emerged is the faint but exciting ripples of a consolidating artistic discourse.

For a short film about the Nafasi Academy see: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=5OzK_ B6vG3s&pbjreload=101

Jesse Gerard Mpango is a writer, curator and educator based in Dar-es-salaam Tanzania.

He is currently the Visual Arts Manager of Nafasi Art Space, a multidisciplinary contemporary art centre, where he has curated exhibitions for rising artists and those established internationally.

Photo Credits: XStudiosnow Page 18: Nafasi Academy Students and Nafasi Team at Hendrick Lilanga’s Studio

18

Art Writing During the Pandemic “Bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.”

Tom Waits

2020 started with a lot of promise… and then Covid-19 happened.

What started off as a distant pandemic finally arrived at out doorstep towards the end of March. We initially thought it’d stay for a week but it has overstayed it’s unwanted welcome.

When everything was locked down and movement limited to essential services only while social distancing and wearing masks, the arts were probably the most affected. While most artists were able to continue practicing from home and other controlled studio spaces, all the galleries and cultural centers remained closed to flatten the curve thereby leaving no possibilities of public interactions and exhibitions.

The snowball effect of this has seen a lot of artists income take a massive hit and has led manyan-artist very aggressive in trying to sell work online – something that most of are new to, thereby exposing themselves to all the risks involved out of sheer desperation.

Normally, there’s a lot of space dedicated to the arts in both mainstream press and other small publications and blogs…

Over the last 5 months, there has been a loud silence regarding contemporary art in Kenya. I gather it was probably considered non-essential but I missed the memo. There are however a couple of video conferencing/ discussions online – but that’s a conversation for another day.

Why are we remotely interested in art writing? What is the essence of our writing? Why is it important to whoever we intend to consume our text? I am a big fan of critical, opinionated and rationalized

writing and I wish this calamity that is Covid could make us step back and re-evaluate how as writers we do what we do. Are we of service to those we write about? COVID-19 has exposed that most of us are mainly non-critical journalists whose primary intent is to report exhibitions and now that exhibitions are on hold, our arsenal have run out of ammo.

USD1 million that was interpreted to be a fund for musicians and actors.

Lucky them. Such a time when we are not ‘reporting exhibitions’ would be a good time for some reflective writing. Writing that questions our relationships with others outside our industry and our importance to this ecology.

May it be that as visual artists we overemphasize our importance and that’s why everyone forgets us.

How has COVID-19 affected you as an art writer? What is there to talk about during this trying time? Do we change our specialty to ‘other issues’ until exhibitions resume?

I cringe every time somebody writes how artists are ‘living large’ and quotes the large figures in the cheques we’re occasionally issued with. I don’t deny that we sometimes do. Some, more frequently than others. However, let us talk about the true stories too. Our suffering and frustrations. They may not be entirely be financial but are there.

Which government department/ institution/office exclusively represents the interests of the visual artist? Where are they? Who is the contact person? What is their mandate? What are their capacities and/or deficiencies? I am not asking so that I come seeking for handouts – and I know I speak for many artists. Maybe I’ll come for ‘free’ coffee or tea since we know our government spends so much on tea, but maybe to brainstorm and bounce ideas off each other. Maybe to seek professional advice. Maybe to invite you to my next gig. Maybe to tell us why they exist in the first place.

There is a lot going on. For instance, it’d be a good time to talk to gallerists about how this pandemic affects them, to event organizers (biennales, fairs etc) how cancellations and indefinite postponements impacts on their short and long term future and above all, enquire from artists how they are coping in these trying times – with no exhibitions and travel opportunities available.

It is common knowledge that most artists have a difficult life (whatever that means) when everything is rosy everywhere.

How is this affected when the roses aren’t growing anymore?

Governments all over the world are offering stimulus packages to cushion different segments of economies. In the UK, through the Arts Council of England, there is a fund of about 160 million pounds available to support organizations and individuals who will need it during this crisis which they say is to ‘help alleviate pressure on them’.

Other countries have different initiatives with different T&Cs. In Kenya, the government announced

stuck to their biggest strength, artists would create and writers would represent our thoughts, grievances, frustrations and accomplishments. However as it stands, most of the writing we’re seeing around is watering down the quality of our struggle.

If every writer took it upon themselves to objectively try find out why we operate the way we do during this unscheduled break, we’d probably be able to understand what happens in the culture ministry, who’s our go to guy, why we don’t have a cultural policy or our own National Arts Council and finally, why we’re always making excuses for mediocrity.

However, bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering, while lying to us that we’re royalty.

The government has got us visual artists where it wants us; they take us round and round as one local musician says in his song ‘like we’re performing the salsa dance’. Then they send us away to go and ‘lobby’. Are we going to make art, or to lobby? If everyone

How has COVID-19 affected you as an art writer? What is there to talk about during this trying time?

19

Ogonga Thom is an artist/curator interested in documenting the regional art practice through analytical writing. He is also cofounder of Nairobi Contemporary.

A Residency in the Time of Coronavirus I got to Lusaka, Zambia, on the 20th March 2020 after a long bumpy journey by bus through East Africa.

Bumpy in the sense that my travels from Kampala, Uganda, coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. By the time I reached Nairobi, two cases of the novel Coronavirus had been recorded there. I thought twice about aborting my mission.

However, I was convinced otherwise

by Julia Taonga Kaseka – the curator and director of the multi-disciplinary art hub Modzi Arts, where I was headed to do an artist residency.

After Kenya, I stopped over in Dares-Salaam, Tanzania. I wanted to pass by Nafasi Art Space but its administrators refused to host me - fearful I could spread the virus.

Also, my mum called the night before leaving Kampala pushing me to cancel my trip aware of its risk.

At Nakonde, the border between Tanzania and Zambia, I got conned 50 dollars when paying for my visa.

I wondered what had happened to the Pan-Africanism that our forefathers fought hard for, asking myself why I had to pay for a visa to visit another African country whereas Europeans move freely within Europe. This incident was recorded in a drawing (titled My Journey) created during the residency. This short article reflects on my experiences during the pandemic and how they informed the works created for my end of residency solo exhibition, dubbed ‘Notes About The Times’ which ran from 16th May to 16th July 2020.

Modzi Arts is a non-profit organization that opened in 2016 and has established itself as a multi-disciplinary art centre that aims to strengthen the Zambian art scene by providing a platform for artists to learn, exchange and showcase. It also holds numerous exhibitions, artist residencies, concerts, and workshops throughout the year. I found the

residency appealing because it took place in Zambia’s vibrant capital city of Lusaka. Modzi Arts also offers curatorial support to artists who are looking to expand their work and connect with others within the Zambian context, while offering support by providing working and living space and a book and tool library to connect artists with their needs.

Unsurprisingly, what I had initially planned to do during the residency was upended owing to the impact of Coronavirus. I wanted to continue the same line as my previous work and was interested in establishing connections between my own Ganda culture and those in Zambia. I wanted to observe how young people perceive and handle their traditional culture versus their newly adopted Western ways. But with all that was happening my creative interest was forced to change. Most conversations I had with people were about COVID-19. I became interested in Julia Taonga Kaseka’s perspectives and her questioning of what was happening during this period just as much as I found interest in voices from social media.

My Facebook account follows numerous Afrocentric intellectuals and conspiracy theorists. I felt a need to look at the situation with a ‘third eye’ and open-mind because most things didn’t seem to make sense or add up.

For instance, I questioned why the media was reporting the infected and dead but ignoring the recovered who made up a bigger number. Why were people like Bill Gates on our screens predicting and telling us what to do during this period? Who gave them the license to do that? And, why were they so concerned? The stock market was crashing and people were losing their jobs globally. Saudi Arabia and Russia were battling for oil prices.

Cities across the world were on lockdown, we were keeping six-feet away from each other and wearing masks each day. Was this going to be the ‘new normal’ like some were saying? And finally, how protective was the mask?

The works I created during my residency reflect this moment and seeks to document these interesting times but most importantly, also provoke the viewer to question what the media and our governments are telling us to do during this period. I feel that these two institutions are powerhouses creating fear, imposing rules and regulations that we have all adhered to

20

without stepping back and asking the much-needed question ‘why?’

With ‘Notes About The Times’, I looked at all the information I was stumbling upon which, of course was a lot. I felt compelled to release all I was absorbing.

Many artists keep sketchbooks. I usually do and this is the approach I turned to - but rather than working within the confines of sketch-book pages I projected my thoughts directly onto the gallery’s walls and canvas (made from reused jeans stitched together, which follows on from previous work).

There are three major aesthetic points in the six works on canvas and one work on the wall that I created for the exhibition - the drawings, the illustrations and the text. The drawings take on a realistic approach and a sketchy outlook with lines and swatches.

They were either drawn from life or from photographs. The illustrations are simplified drawings that accentuate the messages in the text. They are composed from those on the internet and WhatsApp emoji. The text is in my handwriting, a cursive style font I have been using for a while. Using these three elements, I built a story on every aspect affecting me, and those around me during this period. I considered a style that would easily pass on information to the masses and work that would stand alone without needing much description. Something the viewer would easily dive into and decipher.

A major challenge faced by my curator - Julia Taonga Kaseka, was how we were going to put on a show when everyone was locked up indoors. After pondering over this with her and the board at Modzi Arts, we agreed to open the show on 16th May 2020 while observing all the World Health Organization’s recommendations

that the audience would observe social distancing and wear masks.

Luckily, the lockdown in Lusaka wasn’t as harsh as other places so public transport and private cars were free to move and a handful of visitors came for the opening.

A visitor criticized my direct borrowing of imagery from popular culture during the exhibition. He observed that I ought to own the imagery by making them my own and that it could mean changing them to a style of my own. Since I’ve been always interested in rebellion, I take pride in directly borrowing well known imagery of items and ideas and incorporating them in my work.

For example, the Swastika and Benin Bronzes appear in the wall drawing.

Another critique from an exhibition visitor, was my use of the English language in the text. I see myself as being pro-Africa, but for this series I felt that it had to be dealt with in a different way owing to the global aspect in the concept. Also, since arriving in Lusaka, I had been using English in all conversations so its application in my work came naturally. However, there was an intentional effort to add a few Luganda and Kinyanja words in there too. In a sense then, the whole collection may also reflect on the issue of disappearing African languages on the continent, but that could be a story for another time.

An idea that runs through two works is mask wearing. On the one hand this is presented as a metaphor for keeping the masses from expressing themselves. On

is certainly a similarity when you compare events and add in a bit from the conspiracy theories. The work also initiates discussions around the economic situation globally. At the end of the day, the real doomsday is in our pockets and bankruptcy will be knocking at our doors. How many people are losing jobs now? The use of black jeans as canvas material in Doomsday represented the dark days we are living in. I had Pablo Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ in mind when I was creating this work and there is a small hint at it with the text “the new ggwanika”. Ggwanika is a Luganda word meaning mortuary and I liked how it rhymed with the title of Picasso’s work to give a clue to the reader. As a writer and ‘occasional’ poet, I thought a lot about poetry when I was creating this body of work too.

Part of Edvard Munch’s ‘Scream’ appears in my work ‘New Normal’ to further poke at discussions about appropriation. We’ve all heard that Picasso first looked at African masks in European museums before producing works during his cubist period. So, what happens when an African artist tries to take back an appropriated aesthetic?

the other, the inclusion of African masks hints towards my preference to connect myself to my traditional culture and beliefs as opposed to adopting my oppressor’s. The work Afrika Is Not Getting It (a drawing in chalk on a wall) takes on a more Afrocentric path than the other work. For example, it connects with the practice of ancient rock art. Additionally, an audience member suggested it also referenced the passing on of knowledge as seen in traditional classrooms where blackboards are the teacher’s writing pads.

Western media has been posing a very condescending question, “Why is Africa not recording high numbers of corona-virus cases?”

Interestingly or sadly, there is an expectation that disease outbreaks and spread should be more prevalent in the African continent and this is echoed through the voices of Bill and Melinda Gates. The fact that our health facilities are in a sorry state is always fronted as the reason why the continent will be affected greatly by the virus. But so far that has not happened. Also, Madagascar came out claiming to have discovered a cure! With a fair dose of sarcasm and provocation, these works play around with these preconceived notions of the continent versus the current affairs, African history and culture.

This is not the kind of work I expected to be doing when I landed in Lusaka but it’s a body of work I’m proud I did. I believe as artists, we have to listen to our inner voices, we have to be flexible and move with our inner most tides or winds.

It’s something I learnt when I was down here in Lusaka. Also, my overall experience in Lusaka has been a mixture of fun and not-so fun owing to the nature of the times. I had to extend my visa there several times that worried me about being stuck away from home indefinitely.

This deeply got me thinking and questioning immigration laws and systems in the continent, which makes me sad. “Why do I, as a Ugandan need a visa to go to Zambia?”

‘Doomsday’ captures the horror and fear running through us during this time. Is this the end of days like it was told in the Bible? There

On a good note though, my stay in Zambia has solidified my strength,

21

love and understanding of Africa in the collective sense of the fore fathers( Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Thomas Sankara etc).

I have confirmed some of the ideas and cultural facets they talked about and like I hope this will give me the right to speak jointly about the vastness of this land – something some critics (mine as well) are quick to jump out on. They often ask me why I speak about Africa and group it into one yet it’s a huge chunk of land with different cultures yet I have never been or experienced these cultures. Yes, they are very many cultures but at the end of the day, we are one people in the spirit of Ubuntu and the ideas of the forefathers, we share a common history and a similar destination.

Matt Kayem is a contemporary artist, art critic and writer living and working in Kampala, Uganda. He can be reached via email, mattkayem@gmail.com.

Photo Credits: Matt Kayem Page 20: “Afrika Is Not Getting It”, 2020.

Page 21: “Doomsday”, 2020.

A Portrait of Conflicting Identity in Collin Sekajugo’s - This is Uganda: C’est l’Ouganda the Arts clearly identifies with the community and invites collaborations between local artists and those from all over the world.

Since his groundbreaking public art performance in 2012, dubbed Secolliville (initially taking place in the Kampala suburb of Bukoto, then later during Kampala’s 2013 Laba!

Street Art Festival), Collin Sekajugo’s art has set unprecedented waves of excitement and curiosity In Uganda’s contemporary art scene. A few years before, he opened Ndegeya Community of the Arts, located in his home village of Masaka, Uganda. This was a replication of the Weaverbird Arts Community he established in Rwanda in 2007. In Masaka, Sekajugo launched socially consciousness artistic projects that put emphasis on community participation. The underlying niche of the whole venture was to give back to the local community while encouraging issues of environmental responsibility.

Today, Ndegeya Community of

In this article I delve into Sekajugo’s latest series of work (including digitally printed collage paintings on food sacks and performance art), dubbed This is Uganda: C’est l’ Ouganda.

Created in 2019, this body of work demonstrates the artist’s social consciousness, desire to become a ‘global citizen’ - who’s aware of and understands the wider world and their place in it, and the artist’s forte to experiment and provoke conversations through his work.

The concept for this particular body of work is motivated by the ever-conflicting identity of Uganda.

According to the artist there are divergent views and understandings of Uganda. For instance, one section of the public describes Uganda as ‘gifted by nature’, whereas others define it as ‘chaotic’ or ‘a habitually politicking space’ (This is Uganda: C’est l’ Ouganda synopsis, 2019). In the context of this conflicting identity, the multidisciplinary Sekajugo provides a deep insight into the social, economic and cultural landscape of his motherland, Uganda.

As such, This is Uganda: C’est l’ Ouganda invites critical conversations on the contradictory identity of this Sub-Saharan country located within the heart of the continent. In this pursuit, the artist identifies with relevant themes and uses specific materials to reference Uganda’s social and cultural terrain like migration, poverty and starvation, education, environmental protection and healthcare. These topics are a fertile ground for critical dialogue in Uganda since they contribute to the shaping of the identity of

22

many Ugandans; regardless of their gender, political affiliation and social strata. A central medium in the artworks is the quilted empty food sacks that denote the seemingly endless need for humanitarian aid in a poverty stricken country like Uganda. Apparently, poverty has often been identified as the major reason for Uganda’s many social and political ailments.

According to global development agencies like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, it is largely because of poverty and starvation that children drop out of school, swathes of citizens migrate to the Middle-East to work as casual labourers, and thousands of people are imploring for government assistance through the popular chorus of ‘Tusaba Govumenti etuyabbe’ (We’re asking for government support ). It is also the reason why the education and healthcare sectors are struggling because the caretakers have adopted the survival mentality in order to keep on living. Therefore, by evoking the subject of poverty and its association to migration, Sekajugo is relevant to the type of audience – the elite- he wants to reach. This forms the bulk of his social media followers - the artist is very active on social platforms - that can interpret the message underlying in the artworks.

The ability for Sekajugo to connect with his audiences is also evident in previous bodies of work, such as that created for the exhibition What is Beautiful, held at Afriart gallery, Kampala, in 2018. Sekajugo’s series of assemblages created for What is Beautiful were constructed from denim and Kitenge fabric, both of which are materials familiar to Ugandans. Denim is commonly worn among young people in Kampala.

The colourful fabric of Kitenge is associated with the East African region, and it is a textile used to

make elegant clothes for both young and older women. The idea of appropriation of both materials into the artist’s work is symbolic to his awareness and success in creating a local visual language for his work. It is also a showcase of his studio deftness within the context of pushing the boundaries of traditional art making in Uganda.

The delicate stitching together of the quilted empty food sacks- often in different shades - to create a synthetic surface on which he digitally prints imagery and paints onto reverberates the theme of environment sustainability. This theme runs through his past and present art. The empty food sacks, though useful in the storage of food, are often dumped after use within the community. Consequently, these create a problem of environmental pollution. Additionally, the digitally printed collage paintings invite conversation on durability and sustainability of the art to counter the common narrative within global art circles that Africa does not produce art (Collin Sekajugo, Biography Afriart gallery). As a global citizen - ‘an identity he’s intensely inspiring for’- Sekajugo is accurate with his theme of environmental sustainability. This continues to be a critical concern for many countries globally and several international humanitarian agencies.

Uganda today persistently grapples with the issue of environmental pollution from discarded synthetic material like polythene bags that choke the earth, leading to low yields and finally hunger among communities across Uganda. Yet a more striking feature in this art is the delicate interplay of the artist’s personal identity as a multi-ethnic individual regularly represented by the moniker #sekaidentism and the complex identity of Uganda.

In a way, the two personas seem to emerge as one with similar conflicting individuality within the context of fast engulfing globalization. In response to this similarity, the artist often appropriates his own image into the digitally printed collage paintings as a symbol to underline the theme of conflicting identity that runs through the art. Additionally, he seemingly questions the relevance of such complex identities within a larger sphere of global citizenship where such complex identity and absurd differences are blurred. As such, he reiterates his fervent aspiration for a global citizen identity.

conversations on Uganda’s complex identity vis-a-vis his multi-ethnicity.

The two are linked together by virtue of their conflicting personalities and yet in broader sense, of global citizenship, their similarity raises questions on the legitimacy of such prejudiced judgment in these contemporary times. Albeit the poverty, corruption and continuous need for humanitarian aid, Uganda is a beautiful country with numerous opportunities for its nationals to excel in. Equally so, Sekajugo’s multi-ethnicity (Rwandan, Ugandan and Kenyan) - often fronted with social–cultural prejudices - does not curtail his creativity. Otherwise it ironically provides enormous abilities to the artist to push the boundaries of conventional practices - including traditional art practices - like that portrayed in This is Uganda: C’est l’ Ouganda.

In light of this introspective body of work that continues to underline Sekajugo’s ingenuity as a social conscious artist - picking on themes and media that are both relevant and authentic to the public - he is able to stimulate diverse

Dominic Muwanguzi is a Ugandan independent art writer and former editor of Startjournal.org. He has previously written for ContemporaryAnd, Thirdtext Africa, ArtAfrica and had a three month art writing residency at 32° East Kampala.

Photo Credits: Collin Sekajugo Page 22: “Red Carpet, Dirty Walls”, 2019.

Page 23 (below): Collin Sekajugo, mixed media, 2019.

23

Dream Kona: A New Public Art Space in Nairobi

In the introductory text to the 2012 exhibition publication ‘Alternative Histories: New York Art spaces 1960 to 2010’ Mary Anne Staniszewski identifies the import of spaces that can “…counter market-based limitations, societal prejudices, cultural conservatism and institutional restrictions of the mainstream”. In her text the definition of space is not limited to the breath, length and height of physical rooms or their geographies, but rather she opens up this definition by including projects, performances venues, bookstores, publications and the associated communities. I would advance that social media and communal digital platforms squarely fall within these categories. More so at this time. I find Staniszewski’s text particularly apt for the new public art space Dream Kona, which I discuss in this short article.

Over the years there have been initiatives in the Kenyan art scene that have gravitated towards fostering the bonds between art, the artist and the public. Some that come to mind are the public/ community initiatives under the then

of NNM can be found sculptural benches carved by Kenyan sculptors David Mwaniki and Anthony Wanjau from eucalyptus trees felled in the museum’s grounds. These benches were commissioned by TICAH. Under the auspices of the GoDown Arts Centre and running between 2013 to 2018, the 3 editions of ‘Nai ni Who’ acted as a bridge to the different neighborhoods and communities of Nairobi to the expressions that examine their identities. A final example is the Murumbi Peace Memorial Garden located at the fringes of Nairobi’s City Park Cemetery, which was established in memory of Joseph Murumbi (Kenya’s 2nd Vice-president) and his wife Sheila. The Murumbis were ardent collectors of art and artifacts and part of their collection is exhibited at the Kenya National Archives and the Nairobi Gallery.

In the Murumbi Peace Memorial Garden are monumental sculptures

by Elkana Ongesa and Francis Nnagenda, both pioneer Kenyan and Ugandan artists respectively.

Kuona Trust international artists’ residency programs in the early 2000s. Some outcomes from this specific program include – the metal sculptural seats and the concrete sculptural bench in Jeevanjee Gardens, Nairobi by Taiwanese artist Wu Mali and Kenyan sculptor Morris Foit respectively; Ethiopian painter Behailu Bezabih’s communal painting performance with the public at Kenyatta Market Car park; the life size sculpture of a Maasai askari by South African Artist Claudette Schreuder’s that was for many years situated on Aga Khan walk; sculptures by artists Yukinori Yamamura and Kizito Maria-Kasule along the trails of the Botanical garden at the Nairobi National Musuem (NNM).

One of the characterizations of informal education systems has been through the use of the expression ‘learning under a tree or in the bush’. This depiction is multi-edged; for example, it could be likely perceived as a classist dig towards the absence of non-formal educational infrastructures i.e. the classroom under the tree is the one that has no roof and no walls, hence will be regarded as that which is wanting in dignity. Inversely, this imagery can be brought to bear into becoming a profound symbol. This is especially so in this age where, in the aspiration for awareness and meaning, we are constantly pushing the barriers we have identified as agencies of inequality and injustice.

Crucially, this expression can be utilized as the ideal metaphor for the place of where most humanity - if not all, acquires its primary language. At the onset we learn

Also, ‘The Daily Billboard’ project along Aga Khan walk, Nairobi, invited the public response to current affairs and the artists created visuals of this. Starting in October 1998 amid the debris of the August 7th bombings and ending that December, this project was run

by Dutch painter Rene Klarenbeek assisted by Patrick Mukabi and Thom Ogonga. In the gardens

24

our first words and the primordial articulation of our world at our mothers or primary caregivers’ feet. And this space can be the embodiment of the place of intuition.

Dream Kona is nestled in the yellow Fever Acacia trees wooded area in the west corner of Nairobi’s Uhuru Gardens. Under the stewardship of the National Museums of Kenya, Uhuru Gardens stands as one of the principle geographic points in the founding of the Republic of Kenya.

It is memorialized as the birthplace of the Republic of Kenya because it is where the Kenyan national flag was first hoisted. Uhuru is the Swahili term for freedom. In a roundabout way the home of Dream Kona is a place that commemorates ‘freedom’. This is a potent identity.

Uhuru Gardens is a place of monuments. Dream Kona might just be the space that embodies one.

Under the auspices of TICAH (Trust for Indigenous Culture and Health), Dream Kona is one of the first, to the best of my knowledge, public spaces that has been deliberately apportioned for the continual programing of the arts. There is a societal outlook in regards to the activities and direction of this initiative and space. One of these possible outlooks is that this space acts as a potential response to the rareness of spaces that take into consideration the recurring need of artists for conditions and contexts that foster creativity and tranquility. The spot where Dream Kona is situated is very scenic. The other outlook is the cultivation of an atmosphere that encourages the public at large to encounter and connect with the artists’ expressions and efforts. This is evident as revealed by the projects that have taken place so far and the overall locale. One aspect of this, which I was part of, is Dream Kona’s series of Rika (peer) workshops.

RIKA 3 was the third edition of the intergenerational visual arts workshop that is organized by Dream Kona. All Rika workshops have been hosted by artist Patrick Mukabi, founder of the Dust Depo studio. This particular workshop was structured around the medium of printmaking and it brought together artists who are well versed in this and who were mandated with teaching the basic skills around the printmaking techniques of Intaglio drypoint/etching, Woodcut block printing and Silkscreen. The previous two editions covered the mediums of sculpture and painting.

The facilitators for RIKA 3 were: Thom Ogonga, who led the Block print (Relief) process; Geoffrey Karanja (artist and Lecturer at the BuruBuru Institute of Fine Art) who covered the Silk Screen (Planographic) process; and myself focusing on Drypoint etching and engraving. The 20 participating artists in RIKA 3 were drawn from all parts of the greater Nairobi artistic community.

They were representative of a fairly broad range in age, professional experience and social-cultural outlooks.

The structure of this workshop constituted of the first three days being set aside for tutelage, demonstration and technical direction in the different printmaking processes. The remaining 4 days, with the exception of one, were for the participants to develop their own artworks using the various techniques. While this enabled continued exploration and exchange, a vibrant space emerged where the different artists could interact share professional experiences and histories, even beyond the formal parameters of the workshop.

Other Auxiliary events that were part of Rika included; a presentation and discussion by Maggie Atieno on how to navigate the different levels of one’s career (this was informed by her career as a sculptor and her other engagements towards

professional development), a session of Yoga led by James Mweu, a presentation on financial discipline and strategies by Mainga (an economist), a field visit to the GoDown art center facility and offices in Kilimani and the communal painting of a mural on the wall dedicated to this within the Dream Kona grounds.

to surface - the freedom to take risks, experiment, make mistakes, learn, breakdown generational boundaries, and temporarily remove one-self from their habitual environment. These aspects can meaningfully contribute to an artist’s development and growth.

Thus, on a final point, Dream Kona seemingly takes on the metaphor of a classroom under a tree in which participating artists and the public are students and teachers in a new space for the arts in Nairobi.

What, then, might be said of Dream Kona. Firstly, and drawing on Staniszewski’s definition of space discussed above, I suggest that Dream Kona can be seen as a site outside of Kenya’s mainstream art institutions and one which operates away from commercial imperatives..

Its aim at becoming a genuine and long-term public space for the arts is noble and time will tell to what extent this becomes fully realized.

It is a much needed addition to Nairobi’s current art scene. This is particularly the case given the demise of some art-centres that were once a bastion of providing informal art training and offering workshops and other learning opportunities. Additionally, many of Nairobi’s current art institutions fail to take into consideration a larger Kenyan audience, whom are not part of the art-world constituency.

Secondly, and relating to its location in a park imbued with the notion of Uhuru, Dream Kona as opening realms for freedom

Peterson Kamwathi is a multi-displinary artist who is actively engaged within the Nairobi art scene. He lives in Limuru, Kenya.

Photo Credits: Peterson Kamwathi Page 24 (top): “Resilience is Everywhere” mobile art mural at TRM Page 24 (bottom): DreamKona Rika (2) Page 25: DreamKona Mural

25

Peterson Kamwathi Talks to Suzanne Mieko and Eric Manya About Nairobi’s New Public Art Space When did DreamKona start and who was behind this initiative?

•

DreamKona is the brainchild of TICAH (Trust for Indigenous Culture and Health), local artists, and partners at NMK (the National Museums of Kenya). 1 In conversations we kept returning to the idea of creating a public space for all kinds of creativity and art, a space that’s part studio, event space, residency space, meditation space, performance space, sculpture gallery, but 100% dedicated to the arts. There are very few permanent public art spaces in Nairobi, so using Uhuru Gardens for DreamKona seemed like a great idea! Luckily, NMK (who have a long-term partnership with TICAH) also loved the idea and allowed TICAH and the artists to put their ideas into action. In 2017, DreamKona was built and consists of a performance stage, a mural wall, and a herbal and sculpture garden – which currently features work by Gerard Motondi, Elkana Ong’esa, Meshack Oiro. Suzanne Mieko and Eric Manya manage Dreamkona.

• • • •

What is the need of DreamKona?

There’s disconnect between artists in Nairobi; artists tend to just spend time with other artists in their collectives/studios. Many artists don’t spend time with or learn from artists of other generations - older with younger, younger with older. In fact, there is some mistrust between generations - fear of younger artists “stealing” jobs, and or young artists feeling intimidated.

What are the objectives of DreamKona and where did the name come from?

DreamKona teamed up with Patrick Mukabi, of Dust Depot, to disrupt this normality with an artist led residency program. “Rika Residency” (Rika being the Kiswahili word for peer/cohort/age set) is made up of a mix of established artists who came up in the 80’s and 90s, and two younger age sets of artists who came up in the 2000s and later. The aim of the residency is to get different generations, genders and practices together in one place creating art and connecting with one another. TICAH provides materials and a pop up studio at DreamKona. Over the course of a week or two the artists create art together and practice with different mediums than those they usually work with. The second aim of the residency is to get artists to talk to and learn from one another. Topics so far have included: creating bios and artist statements, working with galleries and managers, how to work with clients, how to manage finances and taxes, understanding copyright and related rights, taking care of one another, mental health and more.

Visual artists Moses Nyawanda, Jeff Magina and Daniel Muli, who were involved in the vision making of the DreamKona space, long before it became a reality, gave it the name DreamKona - a corner for dreaming, a space for dreams, a corner where what we see in dreams are a reality.

There are many ways to interpret the name, but it’s also a literal name in a lot of ways as the dreamy space is back in the corner of Uhuru Gardens.

DreamKona is dedicated to creativity. Walk through the ever-changing entranceway into DreamKona and you can almost feel the air change.

Somehow you may feel lighter. It is a space dedicated to allowing its visitors (young and old) to explore their creativity whether it’s through painting, singing, dancing, spoken word, gardening, drama, crafting, sculpting or playing. It’s also a place to connect artists with the public, to teach what Kenyan arts are all about, to show how art contributes to important conversations, to social justice and to health. We have programs that have been tailored to target not only art enthusiasts but any other person who wants to learn and to have fun as well. The programs have included: Kenyan traditional games (katii tournament of champions); free art workshops for all ages; and storytelling sessions with Zamaleo story tellers. Finally, it is a place to celebrate and host Kenyan art and artists.

We are very grateful that so many amazing artists have allowed us to share their work within the space and that so many artists take ownership of the space as a type of creative refuge and place for connection.

How many Rika Residencies have there been so far?

1st Rika June 2019 – Painting. Facilitated by Patrick Mukabi &Thom Ogonga.

2nd Rika October 2019 - Sculpture. Facilitated by Elkana Ongesa, Gerald Motondi, Thom Ogonga, Kevin Odour and Lydia Galavu.

3rd Rika Feb 2020 – Printmaking. Facilitated by Geoffrey Karanja, Thom Ogonga, Peterson Kamwathi, Eric Manya, James Mweu, Catherine Mujomba, Maggie Otieno, Patrick Mukabi, Mainga Mukando.

What are the various projects that DreamKona has undertaken so far?

• •

art, play traditional games and enjoy the beautiful outdoors.

Katii Tournament of Champions - katii and other childhood traditional games event for all ages.

Cloth that Speaks - celebration of women’s power through a range of artistic activities and performances Rika Residency - an artist led residency that brings together three generations of artists over a period of seven to ten days to create, to share and learn from one another Partner Events – we’ve teamed up with NaiNiWho, Kibera Creative Arts (KICA), Without Borders (WiBO), and others for public events Murals and Installations created on the wall every quarter since 2018

Art Days at DreamKona – mini contemporary and traditional art festivals that include mural painting/installation, art workshops for all ages, exhibitions and musical performances.

Holiday Children’s Art Workshops – half-day workshops for children when they are on breaks from school where they get to create

1.

26

TICAH was founded in Kenya in 2003 to enhance the positive links between health and cultural knowledge, practice, belief, ritual, and artistic expression.

are still growing. We have also had more than 300 works of art shared. These pieces have filled our social media feeds with beauty in the midst of emotional distress and pain going on in the world.

Can you tell me a bit about the collective mural?

for Rika 4 on illustration, but with current situation we will figure out what the next project will be with guidance from the health experts.

The mural is the last activity of the residency and it is an activity to promote collaboration between the artists and as a way for the whole team to “sign off” on the week together. Two artists from different age sets volunteer to work together and come up with a sketch/design that they will lead the others on creating at the mural wall. Over a couple days of relaxed painting or creating (sometimes the piece ends up being an installation), the artists finalise their week together with one last piece, some fun music, a good meal and friendly conversation. These days are also open to others (public and artists) to help on the wall. The resident artists also have a chance to show off the pieces they created during the week and help the public understand more about DreamKona.

The creation that remains will live in the space for all to enjoy until the next residency or event.

To date, how many visual artists have been a part of DreamKona?

What is the next project on site?

We had already started planning

170

How has DreamKona responded to COVID-19?

During these uncertain times, we all need some good news, some light and some reassurances. Artists are those individuals in our communities who hold tremendous power to help us see what we are trying to ignore and to hold us accountable, but also to remind us of our joys and the deep and wonderful connections we have to nature and to one another. The global pandemic has scared us and changed us, but it has also brought us together in a way that we have never seen before. Over two weeks, artists around Nairobi will be creating a piece to help us see just this, that we are together even though we are apart and that we are resilient.

With the Lockdown Challenge continuing, artists are eager to take this activism to the next level with an installation. The aim is to celebrate our creativity and the beauty of art but also to inspire and bring hope. The “Resilience is Everywhere” installation will see these forty plus artists working concurrently on their pieces over the course of a week. They will be in isolation but together in their arts practices. Videos and photos of the work coming together will be shared on social media through TICAH’s DreamKona Facebook and Instagram accounts to bring others into the creation of the work. At the end of the week, each piece will be sent, by rider, to the DreamKona space in Uhuru Gardens where a curatorial team (also being careful to maintain social distance) will connect the pieces into one installation. The final work will then immediately be shared online and then immediately go on tour around Nairobi for everyone to enjoy and to connect with. We will make it through this.

We are resilient. We are resilience.

To quote Arthur Golden “Adversity is like a strong wind. I don’t mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be”. With studios closed, galleries closed, museums closed, schools closed, the very livelihood of a visual artist has been closed too. There has been a rallying call for artists to get up and create rather than to ruminate on the state of the world and all that is worrying.

The Internet has seen several online challenges for artists to participate in to keep them creative and working. TICAH’s own Lockdown Challenge is just one of the many where artists have shared their work, their voices, their views, their thoughts and emotions with the world. The Lockdown Challenge has seen over 67 artists participating so far and the numbers

27

Peterson Kamwathi

Nairobi Contemporary Opportunities 1. The Gottlieb Foundation Individual Support Grant The Foundation wishes to encourage artists who have dedicated their lives to developing their art, regardless of their level of commercial success.

Please note that these grants are available only to mature individual visual artists. The Foundation defines maturity in this case as having worked for 20 years or more in a mature phase of art.

The Gottlieb Foundation does not fund organizations, educational institutions, students, graphic artists, or those working in crafts.

The disciplines of photography, film, video, or related forms are not eligible unless the work directly involves, or can be interpreted as, painting or sculpture. The Foundation does not fund exhibitions, installations, or projects of any kind.

Last year, the Foundation awarded grants of $25,000 each to 12 artists.

This program was conceived in order to recognize and support the serious, fully-committed artist, and we hope these individuals will consider applying. Twelve grants are awarded each year. Applications are reviewed by a panel of five professionals in the arts who have no affiliation with the Foundation. In this program, the following criteria must be met: Who: Artists who have been working for at least 20 years in a mature phase of your work, and can demonstrate a need for financial assistance.

Field:Painting, printmaking, or sculpting Amount: $25,000 each to 12 artists Deadline: February 26, 2021 Website: https://www. gottliebfoundation.org/ individual-support-grant-1

2. Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant

Send us your answer as a video together with a signed scan of our Terms and Conditions by 20 September 2020! Your video has to be between 30 and 180 seconds long, excluding credits. All Submissions can be sent via WhatsApp (+254793076611) or via E-Mail to bomoaukuta@nair. diplo.de (preferably download or transfer link, maximum email size limited to 10 MB). Eligible submissions must include a video as well as the signed Terms and Conditions. Download the Terms and Conditions at - https://nairobi.diplo. de/blob/2244554/08aa28e279df7fd0b4baa8c652965e59/bomoafilm-rights-pdf-data.pdf.

Established as part of Lee Krasner’s legacy, the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant was set up to support and strengthen the creative lives of artists. A competitive grant for artists with extensive exhibition records, this grant has a long list of impressive alumni. Since its start in 1985, the foundation has granted over 65 million dollars in award money to artists in over 77 countries.

Who: Mid-career professional artists with demonstrable financial need. Artists must be actively exhibiting their current work in professional artistic venues, such as gallery and museum spaces.

Field: Painters, sculptors, and artists who work on paper, including printmaking.

Amount: Awards range from $5,000 to $30,000, depending on need and circumstance.

Deadline: Ongoing Website: https://pkf.org/apply/

Tell us your story in a short video.

Show us until 20th September what you would like to see changed.

Reach a large audience through your participation on all major social networks in Kenya, and win one of the following prizes: 1. A videographer starter pack consisting of an iPhone 11 (128 GB), a steadycam and a clip-on microphone to continue your creative voyage as a mobile video artist.

2. A brand new iPhone SE 2 phone (2020), a tripod and a clip-on microphone.

3. New Midrange phone and a microphone.

Your winning video will be featured on our Social Media as well as other online events during these Corona-Times!

3. Call for Applications Mobile Video Contest #BomoaUkuta 2020 In celebration of the 30th anniversary of German reunification, the German Embassy in Nairobi is initiating a mobile phone video competition addressing Kenyans to tell their stories on the theme of tearing down invisible walls and overcoming obstacles today.

We all live in societies where we face many obstacles in our daily life as individuals or even together, whether in Germany, Kenya or elsewhere in the world.

We would like to know from you the obstacles you see today for your individual progress or progress of society as a whole?

All videos must be submitted by Sunday, 20 September 2020 will be reviewed by a jury consisting of Edith Kimani (Deutsche Welle News Anchor), Timothy Owase (CEO, Kenya Film Commission), Sheila Mwanyigha (CEO, Rembesha Kenya), renowned cartoonist Gado, the German Embassy as well as Goethe-Institut Kenya.

28

Notice Board

Circle Art Gallery

Red Hill Art Gallery

Boniface Maina October 28 - November 20, 2020

Camille Wekesa Lattices 18th Octtober 2020

Dickens Otieno November 23 - December 23, 2020 Art Auction East Africa - 8th Edition October 21, 2020 www.artauctioneastafrica.com

Artists of the Gallery – A Selection 25Th October – 17Th January 2021

29

S EX A N D T HE CITY IV In Times of Covid-19

exhibition by Michael Soi and Thom Ogonga 17/08 - 29/09

2020