VISUAL ART ONLINE, A HEALING PANACEA

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (April 2020)

Feeling depressed, bored, lonely or simply claustrophobic. Maybe you even feel an affinity with those protesters on the American streets, marching without masks, some even sporting guns and insisting that the ‘shutdowns’ be lifted so everything can ‘go back to the way it was’.

Well, one sure way to lift your spirits is to get into Facebook, Instagram or Twitter and not read the news, be it ‘fake’ or genuine and true.

Look for the visual. You may have to work a little bit since your algorithms may not be periodically sending you images of visual art by Kenyan painters, sculptors, cartoonists, mixed media or graffiti artists like Michael Soi, Bertiers Mbatia, Gado, Evans Ngure or Swift 9.

But once you take a moment and stick in names like Patrick Mukabi or Elizabeth Mazrui or Mary Collis or Victor Ndula or even Bankslave, you will begin to see an extraordinary array of artworks that will fill your day with colors, creativity, light and surprises to rouse your interest in a field you may not have paid attention to before now.

In this time of boredom or blight when many are yearning to get back to work or at least get into something that excites them while they are stuck indoors, the visual arts online have come alive. They might even serve as a panacea to your boredom.

And not only with artists who we have seen regularly on either Instagram or Facebook, like Soi who often shares his paintings ‘in progress’ with photos or short videos.

There’s also the graffiti artist, one of the trio of BSQ based behind the Kenya Railway Museum, Msale who also regularly shares his graffiti art.

So does Bankslave who is another one of Kenya’s great graffiti artists. Both painters use spray paints as well as acrylics, mainly on massive walls which they share online either in short films or as still photos. Either way, they exemplify the creative expression that hasn’t stopped even under our current cramped cultural conditions of mostly sticking indoors for fear of getting hit by that crazy and mysterious viral killer, CVD-19.

We have also seen an artist best known for her colorful abstract expressionist art, Mary Collis, give us a daily ‘exhibition’ on Facebook of one of her glorious paintings. She might have painted one canvas in a friend’s colorfully floral backyard, or another outside in Cape Town overlooking the sea, or yet another in Zanzibar exploring the fascinating features of its Swahili architecture.

Some of the artworks online have been created in the past but have never before been seen in public, like a sculpture shaped long ago by Wambui Collymore which compels us to recommend she go back to that genre and get serious about what she can produce sculpturally right now.

Another set of recent, but pre-CVD-19 art, visible mainly on Instagram is coming out under the name, DreamKona since that’s the venue (inside Uhuru Garden) where many Kenyan artists have come in the last two years to create artworks in a kind of open-air gallery space, created by T.I.C.A.H (Trust for Indigenous Culture, Art and Health). They include everyone from Anne Mwiti, Patrick Mukabi, Gloria Muthoka, Nadia Wamunyu, Sane and Eunice Wadu and BSQ’s KayMist, Thufu B and Msale.

Other works are being created as we speak or at least since the lockdown began. Many of them speak directly to our current conditions like Drishti Vohra’s ‘Opening Doors Within’ on Instagram in which the artist suggests we take this time to be more introspective and think deeply about all the good things we have to be grateful for.

Other new works that we have the opportunity to see are experimental pieces that some Kenyan artists are working on as they use this time to be daring and innovative. Like Moira Bushkimani[m1]  who’s been discovering the artistic possibilities of mixing sculpture, photography and visual art, and sharing it on Instagram.

The other thing that is exciting about Kenyan visual art in this age of lockdown is that individuals best known for being something other than an artist are coming out and revealing what has been there all along, namely their artistic inclination.

One such Kenyan is the financial analyst, Ritesh Barot who apparently has been quietly painting watercolors for several years, but only recently exposed his generous talents on Facebook this week. One reminds me of Claude Monet’s ‘Waterlilies’ only his ‘lilies’ look like sun shine, radiant reminders this too shall pass.

---

 [m1]

THIS SPY THRILLER’S A SHOCKER

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (May 2020)

Netflix is doing a booming business now that the COVID-19 pandemic has got everyone cooped up inside their homes. The lockdown has been a blessing for not only Netflix but also for most of the other streaming channels, from Hulu and Showmax to Disney Plus. And recently it was rumored that even Facebook is getting into the game of attracting eyeballs bored with indoor living.

But while others are catching up fast, Netflix still seems to be the top dog in the game. Offering the choices of everything from comedy and drama to documentaries and mysteries.

Personally, I have a preference for spy thrillers like ‘Traitors’, a British-American murder mystery that I highly recommend. It’s rather complicated, but it’s also historical fiction since it is set right at the end of World War Two and in the early hours of the Cold War between the US and UK against the USSR.

It’s a fascinating tale that starts out with an inexplicable murder only to turn into an apparent love story between a young woman graduate of Cambridge named Feef (Emma Appleton) and her attractive American boyfriend Peter. That doesn’t last long however since he gets bumped off by an OSS (soon to be renamed CIA) colleague named Rowe (Michael Stuhlbarg).

Peter’s murder by his ostensible friend compounds the mysterious intrigue of this six-episode series. But we quickly can see that Rowe is the villain whose ulterior motive seems to be that of winning the incipient Cold War.  He wants to get his hands on Feef, not romantically, but to turn her into a spy whom he plans to ‘handle’ while he guides her into infiltrating the British Foreign Office to detect who’s the Russian mole working there.

‘Whatever it takes’ is clearly the stealthy Rowe’s motto, only Feef doesn’t have a clue until much later on. She believes Rowe who he claims Peter had an urgent assignment but he would be back soon. He successfully strings her along, disclosing only what she needs to know.

Feef has her own ambitions so she’s prepared to play the spying infiltrator although it’s more of a gamey pastime as she awaits Peter’s return. All of these characters are deftly drawn with Feef the most endearing. However, she too gets into the game once she finagles herself into the inner sanctum of the British Foreign Office where its boss is a middle-aged spinster who is apparently married to her job. Yet Priscilla Garrick (Keeley Howes) is possibly the most complicated character of all. But to find out how and why that is, one will have to see the series.

What is fascinating about ‘Traitors’ is that no one is who he or she appears to be. What is equally absorbing is the fact that the series is set at the cusp of a new historic era, that of the Cold War. It’s a war that clearly has global implications since it is also a time when the British Empire is winding down, having already lost most of its imperial power and only needing to ‘tidy up loose ends’, like its role in the Middle East and, as Kenyans know, also in East Africa where it will take a few more years to carefully hand over the reins of power to the locals there.

Be assured ‘Traitors’ is not your typical spy thriller. Suffice it to say that the most serious shocker of the series is in the last episode. So I recommend you not stop until you get there since I doubt you will second-guess what you will find just there!

MATHARE MURALS WITH A COVID-19 MESSAGE

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (May 2020)

In light of the lockdown and government restrictions on movement, most local artists must either work from home or out of doors.

That’s not a problem for graffiti artists like Brian ‘Msale’ Masasia despite the fact that his studio, behind the Kenya Railway Museum is normally a beehive of activity. But now it’s gone silent. Previously, the old derelict railway car, which Msale and his fellow graffiti artists, Kaymist and Thufu B, transformed into a funky art studio, was regularly filled with young aspiring artists who wanted to learn graffiti techniques from these street-art masters.

But right now, Msale has a different audience, message and agenda in mind. As usual, his primary platform for painting is Nairobi walls. But ever since the coronavirus shut down most of the graffiti painting and training at his railway studio, Msale has been painting with a simple message elsewhere.

The latest location where he’s been working outdoors is in Nairobi’s second largest slum, Mathare. His mission is to bring a greater degree of enlightenment to the local people in that one slum so they’ll be better informed about the life-threatening coronavirus and COVID-19.

“Not that Mathare residents are unaware of life-threatening diseases,” says Msale who was accompanied that day by a couple of other graffiti artists. “The people deal with deadly diseases like cholera, typhoid and malaria on a daily basis, so they may not understand the difference between them and COVID-19,” he adds.

One passer-by admits that if he had to make a choice, he’d choose buying food before buying a mask. But that doesn’t deter Msale.

“We want our mural to convey five simple points meant to keep people safe at this time,” says the artist who collaborates on this one wall with Mutua-Arts and his assistant Poolman. (“Those are the names I know them by,” Msale admits.)

The five points are integrated into the painting. They are to “stay at home, maintain social distancing, wash your hands regularly, cover your mouth whenever you cough and call 719 if you feel sick,” says the artist.

This mural, like the other four that Msale previously painted in Mathare, was conceived without sponsorship or donor support. “I just have an affinity for Mathare since it was the first place that I created graffiti art. I had been a third year [Kenyatta] University student attached to the studio of the graffiti artist Swift 9 [Elegwa] when Swift had a mural to paint in the valley and invited me along,” Msale adds.

Trained as a painter at KU, Msale says he learned about the aesthetics of fine art at University. “But I always knew that art could also be a means of informing and teaching. I learned that from my mother who was a pre-primary school teacher who used art to teach.”

So it seemed logical, once he and the country went into lockdown, there might be a means of employing his talent to convey a valuable message to people who he says are “forgotten” by the powers that be.

“I know people are prepared to play their part [in fighting the pandemic]. But if they don’t know what that part is, then they can’t play it,” says Msale who feels his murals are informing the locals about what they must do to protect themselves from this deadly virus. The idea, he says, is to reach people on the ground and help them to stay safe.

One of Msale’s friends who was born and raised in Mathare, Anthony Mwelu, is the one who helped him obtain paints for his murals.

From the outset, Msale was documenting the process of creating the COVID murals on Facebook and Instagram. It was one of the later murals that attracted the attention of a reporter with the British publication, The Guardian.

“We were already in the process of creating the fifth Mathare mural when The Guardian’s Duncan Moore asked if he could come along with us,” says Msale who introduced Moore and his video team to Lucas Odhiambo, of the Mathare Roots Youth Initiative.

“Lucas helped us find the wall where we painted this last mural in bright bold colors meant to attract people’s attention,” says the masked Msale.

“When I was painting the first mural, I rarely saw people wearing masks. Now I see many people wearing home-made kitangi masks,” Msale notes.

ART ONLINE IS THE WAY WITH OR WITHOUT COVID-19

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (April 2020)

International Women’s Day, March 8^th, came and went with hardly a ripple of attention or public awareness of the day and its significance.

Yet a few artists took note and prepared exhibitions to run through the entire month. Unfortunately, those shows all got shot down by the coronavirus scare that didn’t just hit Kenya but is a global shutdown.

Nonetheless, a few of those shows can be seen online. Most of them cannot however. In future, more artists are likely to put their works online either with online galleries like KendiArt or One Off Gallery or as solo artists who either have websites of their own or display their work on Facebook as many do.

The shows that we missed were at the Waterfront Mall in Karen and Karen Country Club as well as at Kenya National Theatre’s Cheche Gallery and at the Art Caffe Westminister where you would have found the one-woman exhibition by Taabu Munyoki.

Fortunately for Taabu, Art Caffe has a Facebook page where you will find an interview with Taabu. Sadly, her paintings don’t appear.

If you had gotten to KNT’s Cheche Gallery in time, you would have seen Goddesses and Queens painted by Chela Cherwon and works by Afro-Renaissance artists Steve Ogallo aka Sogallo and Marvin Macharia aka Native.

At Karen Country Club, you could have seen art by Mary Ogembo, Nadia Wamunyu, Kay Sanaa, Rose Mwendwa, Stephanie Otolo and Celeste de Vries as well as by guys like Dickson Nedia, Kibet Kirui, Kamau Kariuki Absalom Aswani and Kenndy Kinyua among others.

Meanwhile, there were a number of major exhibitions that were held this month. There was Manjano at Village Market where Nadia Wamunyu won a top prize, Nairobi Design Week at Lava Latte where Chela and Naitiemu were exhibiting and the Art Auction East Africa which also had a preview exhibition at Circle Art Gallery.

It’s at the website for the Art Auction that you will find artworks by a number of outstanding women artists. Among them are women from around East Africa such as Souad Abdul Rassoul from Egypt as well as Theresa Musoke, Dr Lilian Nabulima, Sarah Wasswa and Stacey Gillian Abe all from Uganda.

Among the Kenyan women whose art can be found online, courtesy of Circle Art Gallery are Rosemary Karuga, Yony Waite, Tabitha wa Thuku, Annabel Wanjiku and Emily Odongo.

The conclusion that artists can draw from our current COVID-19 pandemic is that if they want their art to be seen in this day and age, they had better find ways to exhibit it online.

The easiest way to do that is to go on Facebook or Instagram and expose your art in online venues such as these. Already, many artists and designers are doing this. Some are using YouTube and a few are assembling websites of their own, such as Chelenge van Rampelberg who has her own Home Gallery.

Then there are a number of artists affiliated with specific galleries or online platforms like ArtLabAfrica or OneOffGallery. There are only a few women connected with these sites, such as Beatrice Wanjiku who is at both Art Lab and One Off sites. Florence Wangui is also at the One Off site.

So while a number of artists refuse to show their works online because they are paranoid that someone will ‘steal’ their ideas, especially ‘the Chinese’, the rest may choose to take the risk. But it is more likely those online will have greater opportunities to show and also sell their works. They will have a higher public profile which in the long run will be in their interest.

Ultimately, the easiest way to look up an artist is to google him or her and see their images and art for yourself.

THE ETIQUETTE OF ZOOM

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (March 2020)

Now that we are all getting used to confinement, or self-quarantining as they say in the brave new world of COVID-19, we have found the coronavirus is a leveler or equalizer, putting us all at odds with our fellow human beings.

Social-distancing, being a new term invented in 2020, has necessitated that we, the public globally, have had to learn how to do without hugs, handshakes, kisses and every sort of physical affection or contact.

As the African-American journalist-‘jail bird’ or political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal put it recently, speaking from his jail cell (where he’s incarcerated for supposedly murdering a cop), put it, “I’m doing fine in here where I’m confined just like the rest of you are.”

The one salvation many of us have discovered (some of us, late in the game) is the value of social media. Both young and old are increasingly communicating on either Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the old fashioned email, texting and telephone. The younger folk have also moved on to platforms like Snapchat etc.

There is one media platform which has been around for some time but in recent days, has been ‘discovered’ by people who’d never spent time talking face-to-face on either Skype, Facetime or even Messenger before. And that is Zoom.

Zoom is actually a video conference system founded in 2011 by Chinese-American, Eric S. Yuan. Yuan, 50, came up with the idea that same year while he was vice president of engineering at Cisco Systems. But since the company took no interest in his visionary concept, he quit and founded Zoom. Initially, he struggled to get his online conferencing concept accepted. But today, he is a billionaire said to be worth $7.5 billion and counting.

It was only this year that Yuan was included in Forbes’ list of billionaires. Coincidentally, this year is also when global awareness of the mysterious coronavirus began claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. It was also the time when social-distancing, hand-sanitizing and face masks became essential items meant to save people’s lives.

The virus has creating too many global and personal problems to rehearse here. Suffice it to say that human communication, talking and seeing at least the faces of friends and professional colleagues, has truly played a life-affirming role. And this is where Zoom comes in.

There are other video conferencing systems like GoToMeeting and others. But it’s the wide-spread use of Zoom that has made Yuan a multi-billionaire overnight and frankly thrown a life-line to many businesses, families, churches and possibly temples and mosques.

But it’s also thrown non-techie folks into a whole new arena where they have had to learn the ‘how to’s’ of Zoom: how to see your face, hear your voice and the voice of others as well as how to go silent or invisible while still hearing the voices of your neighbors, workmates, loved ones or even your pastor, rabbi, imam or possibly even your pope.

Then there’s the issue of wanting not to show off your messy bedroom so Zoom can allow you to change the backdrop of your visual rectangle. You may want to look academic, sporty or even vacationing and speaking from the Bahamas or Bali or even Mumbai. All those images are easily projected with Zoom although you have to know which buttons to click and when to click which one.

There are a whole lot of so-called ‘Webinars’ that one can find ‘out there’ on the internet that can guide you in navigating this whole new world of Zoom.

As it turns out, once you try it, it becomes second nature. That is, if your book club, church, company or social welfare group tells you to get on Zoom and sends you the link to click onto.

But then there is an etiquette to Zoom, meaning a way to socialize without being too noisy, too invisible or too inept not to bother to find out how best to communicate via Zoom.

For instance, the mute button comes in handy if you have noisy babies or barking dogs. You may need to show your face when everybody else is so doing. Otherwise, you’ll be considered anti-social. There is even a ‘raise your hand’ button that enables your Zoom ‘host’ to call on you as you wait your turn to speak.

In all, Zoom is helping people not to go crazy in this time of isolation. Not that Zoom is a savior, but almost.

ELEPHANT QUEEN: A COMPELLING TALE TEACHES CONSERVATION

By Margaretta wa Gacheru March 2020

It’s no wonder ‘The Elephant Queen’ has won international film awards all the way from Toronto to New York and London to Sundance, Utah.

It’s an enchanting feature documentary narrated by the award-winning actor Chewetel Ejiofor (The Lion King and The Boy who harnessed the wind) and written by Mark Deeble who also co-directed it with his fellow filmmaker and wife Victoria Stone.

It took them eight years to make the film, four to live fulltime in Tsavo East National Park and the greater Amboseli-Tsavo ecosystem. In those four years, he would film every day and she would edit every night. And in the process, they crafted a remarkable story about a majestic matriarch they named Athena and her beautiful elephant family.

“It took us one and a half years to find Athena,” says Deeble who first saw her near their campsite. It was her majesty and stately size of her tusks that initially struck them. “But then we saw her family including the cubs,” he adds, admitting they were quickly inspired to follow them and film their lives.

But don’t imagine ‘The Elephant Queen’ is just a cute animal ‘reality show’ or just another wildlife documentary. The film is indeed meant to be family-friendly, and this may be why the filmmakers don’t focus on the cruel criminality of poachers. Nor do they dwell on the tragic connection between climate change and the famine Athena and her family face on their journey from their home, a waterhole run dry, across Badlands, finally to reach another waterhole whose water comes from an underground spring not from the air.

Deeble manages to magically capture all the drama, joy and delightful charm of Athena’s kingdom at their waterhole which the family shares with a myriad of creatures. The interaction of them and the family, extended over time is a marvel. Each creature has a story, from the high-flying dung beetle to the goslings we see emerge from their eggs eventually to become fully grown geese.

The film is ingeniously energized by the busy lives of chameleons and fern frogs, bull frogs and tortoises, fish and flocks of flying fowl, all of which are part of the Queen’s paradise. In this regard, Deeble had a big advantage, having trained as a zoologist before becoming a filmmaker. It’s that background that enabled him to share not just a humanist perspective on the creatures but share the creatures’ stories from their point of view.

The film feels less like a documentary and more like a moving feature film about a family held together by the all-seeing, all-wise Athena who is deeply committed to keeping her family safe and intact.

From season to season, feast to famine, Badlands back to Paradise, ‘The Elephant Queen’ is meant to appeal to children and adults alike. Nonetheless, the filmmakers made an arrangement with the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development to share the Queen’s story through a book series specially developed by a larger ‘Elephant Queen’ team which will be included in the country’s national curriculum.

“Their intention from the beginning was for the film to have wide outreach and appeal right here in Kenya,” says Lucinda Englehart who produced the film with Victoria Stone.

“That is why we created a series of 28 ‘learn to read’ children’s books which are meant to both promote literacy and wildlife awareness that will ideally remain with them all their lives,” Lucinda adds.

Beautifully illustrated by Harriet Stanes and Sophie Walbeoffe, the books may also enable children to gain appreciation not only for the beauty of nature and the environment but also of art/

The Queen ‘team’ also created a series of three scripts for different age-groups to produce plays revolving around the characters in the film, from the ever-tardy gosling and romantic tortoise to the acrobatic dung beetle, they all have roles to play in scripts meant to be catalysts for creativity.

Deeble and Stone have spent more than 30 years making films in Africa, but never before one focused on the Matriarch of the Savannah. And while ‘Queen’ had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, it’s here in Kenya that they’ve created an Outreach Program with KICD that aim at making the film accessible to all Kenyans. The book series and plays are only two aspects of their concern for accessibility. They have also translated the film’s narrative into Kiswahili and Maa for public screenings.

It will also be shown on Kenyan TV on Easter Sunday at 5pm.