ARTISTS’ OPEN HOUSE ATTRACTS SHOPPERS OVER JAMHURI WEEKEND

            Boniface Maina's art was displayed at Brush tu's Open House in December, 2020

BY Margaretta wa Gacheru (published December 25, 2020)

Having an Open House implies being so transparent and welcoming that you are happy to invite any and everyone into your home. Even during a pandemic, the Brush tu Art Collective was willing to declare their open invitation on Instagram to come and see some of the latest artwork Brush tu artists have conceived, mostly since March when the COVID shutdowns first hit.

For instance, Boniface Maina, one of the co-founders of the Collective (with Michael Musyoka and David Thuku) just recently had a solo exhibition at Circle Art Gallery (where masks and social distancing were imperatives). Yet he presented four of his post-exhibition paintings, each one placing Maina’s avatar in spaces where COVID hasn’t reached and life is relaxed. His only concern is that two of his paintings are entitled ‘Fantasy’, yet most Kenyans know the pandemic is neither a fantasy nor a hoax. So those paintings seem almost otherworldly since the avatar looks oblivious to the viral threat.

                                                                    Boni Maina's art at Brush Tu Open House

Among the other Brush tu artists who have been painting up a storm since the shutdowns kept them at home is Sebawali Sio who has brought several of her latest glass-on-glass paintings to display during the group’s Open House weekend.

“But we’re likely to keep the exhibition open for another week or two since many people have said they want to see our work but don’t want to be around crowds,” Sebawali tells Business Daily. That’s a good sign since there are lots of red ‘sold’ stickers on the art, but still, there are a few visible price tags, meaning works are still there to be sold.

Peteros Ndunde is among those artists whose paintings have red stickers, while Maina also had a few. (The rest of the reds are scattered all around the studio.) Fortunately, Peteros promised interested parties that he would bring more of his new paintings early next week to replace those already sold.

But while the new owners of Peteros’ works agreed to leave their art at the studio for others to see the subtle new developments in his style, Lincoln Mwangi’s clients had other plans. They bought nearly all the young painter’s paintings shorter after the doors opened for the artists’ Jamhuri weekend event. But they were also quick to lift Lincoln’s artworks off the wall and quietly disappeared, leaving just one of his paintings and a long bare wall. The artist wasn’t disappointed about the sales but he was already hearing from unhappy shoppers who wanted to see and potentially buy more of his art.

One of Brush tu regulars who did not disappoint was Abdul Kiprop. He had a whole wall-like panel filled with his COVIS Mask prints made with the printing press that the artist made from scratch. Having come to Brush tu with the intention of becoming a painter, Abdul attended several print workshops given through Brush tu by master printers like Peterson Kamwathi and Thom Ogonga. He was wholly hooked on the art of printmaking after that. But as he was taught on other people’s presses, he realized he had no choice but to make his own, which he did! Now it’s available for use by all the Brush tu artists and friends who want to experiment with printing.

That air of openness and sharing is the ethos that has been a part of Brush tu’s appeal from the outset. It is also one reason the group has had so many interns arriving from various art institutions, both local and European. Most recently, photographer and art blogger Emmaus Kimani took part in a German cultural exchange program that took him to Berlin initially for three months. “But then, when the pandemic hit, I had to remain in Germany another four months,” says Emmaus who also had a chance to visit Hamburg where he met up with fellow Kenyan artist, Nicholas ‘Nicomambo’ Odhiambo who is currently studying fine art at the university there.

Emmaus also had a display table set up at Brush tu where the public could view an abundance of his photographs printed as post cards and computer mouse pads (but equally frameable). This intrepid camera man takes photos wherever he goes, both locally and overseas. In Germany, he was big on shooting skyscapes and other artful images.

Other Brush tu artists who have works on display included sculptor Boniface Kimani, Munene Kariuki, newcomer Husna Nyathira Ismail, Waweru Gichuhi and Moira Bushkimani whose paper-cut paintings were in high demand even without price tags on them.

BY Margaretta wa Gacheru (published December 25, 2020)

Having an Open House implies being so transparent and welcoming that you are happy to invite any and everyone into your home. Even during a pandemic, the Brush tu Art Collective was willing to declare their open invitation on Instagram to come and see some of the latest artwork Brush tu artists have conceived, mostly since March when the COVID shutdowns first hit.

For instance, Boniface Maina, one of the co-founders of the Collective (with Michael Musyoka and David Thuku) just recently had a solo exhibition at Circle Art Gallery (where masks and social distancing were imperatives). Yet he presented four of his post-exhibition paintings, each one placing Maina’s avatar in spaces where COVID hasn’t reached and life is relaxed. His only concern is that two of his paintings are entitled ‘Fantasy’, yet most Kenyans know the pandemic is neither a fantasy nor a hoax. So those paintings seem almost otherworldly since the avatar looks oblivious to the viral threat.

Among the other Brush tu artists who have been painting up a storm since the shutdowns kept them at home is Sebawali Sio who has brought several of her latest glass-on-glass paintings to display during the group’s Open House weekend.

“But we’re likely to keep the exhibition open for another week or two since many people have said they want to see our work but don’t want to be around crowds,” Sebawali tells Business Daily. That’s a good sign since there are lots of red ‘sold’ stickers on the art, but still, there are a few visible price tags, meaning works are still there to be sold.

Peteros Ndunde is among those artists whose paintings have red stickers, while Maina also had a few. (The rest of the reds are scattered all around the studio.) Fortunately, Peteros promised interested parties that he would bring more of his new paintings early next week to replace those already sold.

But while the new owners of Peteros’ works agreed to leave their art at the studio for others to see the subtle new developments in his style, Lincoln Mwangi’s clients had other plans. They bought nearly all the young painter’s paintings shorter after the doors opened for the artists’ Jamhuri weekend event. But they were also quick to lift Lincoln’s artworks off the wall and quietly disappeared, leaving just one of his paintings and a long bare wall. The artist wasn’t disappointed about the sales but he was already hearing from unhappy shoppers who wanted to see and potentially buy more of his art.

One of Brush tu regulars who did not disappoint was Abdul Kiprop. He had a whole wall-like panel filled with his COVIS Mask prints made with the printing press that the artist made from scratch. Having come to Brush tu with the intention of becoming a painter, Abdul attended several print workshops given through Brush tu by master printers like Peterson Kamwathi and Thom Ogonga. He was wholly hooked on the art of printmaking after that. But as he was taught on other people’s presses, he realized he had no choice but to make his own, which he did! Now it’s available for use by all the Brush tu artists and friends who want to experiment with printing.

That air of openness and sharing is the ethos that has been a part of Brush tu’s appeal from the outset. It is also one reason the group has had so many interns arriving from various art institutions, both local and European. Most recently, photographer and art blogger Emmaus Kimani took part in a German cultural exchange program that took him to Berlin initially for three months. “But then, when the pandemic hit, I had to remain in Germany another four months,” says Emmaus who also had a chance to visit Hamburg where he met up with fellow Kenyan artist, Nicholas ‘Nicomambo’ Odhiambo who is currently studying fine art at the university there.

Emmaus also had a display table set up at Brush tu where the public could view an abundance of his photographs printed as post cards and computer mouse pads (but equally frameable). This intrepid camera man takes photos wherever he goes, both locally and overseas. In Germany, he was big on shooting skyscapes and other artful images.

Other Brush tu artists who have works on display included sculptor Boniface Kimani, Munene Kariuki, newcomer Husna Nyathira Ismail, Waweru Gichuhi and Moira Bushkimani whose paper-cut paintings were in high demand even without price tags on them.

NEW GALLERY OPENED BY KENYAN PAINTER IN ROSLYN

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (composed December 2020)

Patrick Kinuthia opened his new Roweinay Gallery last August with little or no fanfare. 

Yet who would deny that his move from his home studio in Migaa village, Kikuyu County into the upmarket Roslyn Riviera mall isn’t a major event in Kenya’s regional art world?

Patrick isn’t a Kenyan artist who’s inclined to toot his own horn or to make a spectacle of himself. He prefers to let his paintings speak for themselves. And indeed, they have over the years when he’s exhibited everywhere from the Dusit 2 Hotel, Village Market, Sarang Art and Banana Hill Art Galleries to the Tribal Art Gallery, United Nations Recreation Centre, Little Art Gallery and Michael Joseph Centre at Safaricom.

He’s been an artist ‘on fire’ for years, painting series of subjects that range from portraits and landscapes to local market scenes and Swahili doors that he’s seen in Mombasa’s Old Town. One of the country’s most prolific artists, Patrick is probably best known for his expressionist portraits of beautiful African women, some derived from his vivid imagination, others from any number of Kenya’s 43 communities.

But once he got commissioned by ICRAF, (now the World Agro-Forestry Centre) to paint local landscapes back in 2013, his impressionist visions of Kenya’s natural spaces have won him many more admirers.

Patrick claims he came to Roslyn Riviera for ‘convenience’s sake’.

“It was difficult for many of my clients to find my home in Kikuyu,” says the artist. “So I felt I needed to find a base more centrally located and easier for people to find my work,” he adds.

Having a gallery of his own also means he is now able to exhibit his latest works as well as some early ones. That includes remnants of series such as his ‘Gabra man’, (from his indigenous people phase), his Wangigi Market, (from his ‘African Markets’ series), and even from his more recent ‘African Garment series’ which was so well received that he decided to replicate several of them, only now as miniature works.

Occupying the space most recently held by One Off Gallery which opened and closed its Annex several months back, Patrick isn’t only planning to exhibit his art alone.

“I’m currently showing works by two local artists, Kennedy Kinyua and Njeri Kinuthia (no relation) who is a student of mine,” he says. “But I am open to the idea of exhibiting other artists’ works. In fact, I plan to give at least one wall [near the gallery entrance] to display other artists,” he adds.

What’s more, Patrick intends to run artists’ workshops in the gallery which got its name, roweinay, from the Kikuyu word meaning ‘river’. “The Ruaka river is just behind us,” says the man who has painted many Kenyan rivers, streams, and lakes. Two of them, Lakes Naivasha and Nakuru, are on display in the gallery right now.

Patrick has always been an independent spirt. He has also been keen on art from his youth. He grew up with a father who so loved the arts that he founded his own mobile cinema company and showed films all over Eastlands estates and beyond. But Patrick’s dad also appreciated the visual arts so much that he hired a professional artist from Pakistan named Rafiq Mohammed to paint advertising posters and murals promoting his Citizen Cinema company.

Nonetheless, Patrick’s father originally wanted his son to study accounting, which he did briefly after graduating from Hospital Hill School where he’d studied art throughout secondary (and primary) school. But once he made clear to his dad that accounts were not for him, Patrick went to work with his elder, painting under the tutelage of Rafiq.

“Rafiq was a meticulous portrait artist who also painted beautiful landscapes,”” recalls Patrick. “My father once commissioned him to paint all the African leaders of that time,” he adds, noting that he and Rafiq painted ‘poster art’ of everyone from Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone to sundry Chinese karate stars.

But after four years apprenticing with the Pakistani, Patrick went to study graphic design at the Kenya Polytechnic (now Technical University). From there, he got a job with Metal Box in Thika doing graphic design. But this too did not satisfy Patrick’s desire to get to work on his own. And that is what he’s been doing ever since.

Patrick admits he ‘went out on a limb’ when he opened the gallery. But being among the few Kenyan gallerist-painters, I’m inclined to believe his new initiative will succeed.

AN ONLINE AFRICAN MUSEUM COMING SOON

                                                                       Woodabe men's Courting Competition

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (composed Christmas 2020)

Photographers Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher first met right here in Nairobi at the African Heritage Pan African Gallery more than 40 years ago.

Both artists, one from America, the other from Australia, they were equally adventurous, ambitious, and highly resourceful women. Both were also women who loved Africa and set their sights on working here, particularly with less-known African communities. So it didn’t take long for them to decide to join forces and pursue their mutual interests together.

Now, forty-five years and 17 best-selling coffee table-top books later, the two have finally started to put their life work online.

“We were actually on a book tour in Germany, speaking about our latest book, ‘African Twilight’ [which they launched in Kenya at African Heritage House just a year ago] when one professor came up and asked if we were interested in creating an African online museum that featured our photographs, videos and books,” says Carol who is back in Kenya on holiday as is Angela.

They realized the time was ripe for them to pursue the idea. “We didn’t get funding from any specific source, but the professor did fund raising and so did we,” says Carol who has been working non-stop with Angela this past year sorting through their half-a-million images and thousand hours of short videos, all focused on the ceremonies and rituals as well as the sheer beauty of remote African cultures.

“Our work has taken us to 47 African countries, to 150 ethnic groups over the past 45 years, so we clearly have a lot of material to cover,” she adds. Plus, she says their museum will feature 200 of their detailed, illustrated journals which they kept on their journeys to remote villages and which will help them put detailed captions on all their images that go online.

The online museum will be launched in 2021 sometime before June, says Carol who is taking a break in Kenya until next month. Then she and Angela will get back to London where they share a house. “I stay on the bottom floor while Angela lives on the top one, and our studio is on the middle floor,” she explains.

Carol says setting up the online museum is by no means the culmination of their photographic careers. Nonetheless, the title of their latest book, ‘African Twilight’ suggests their photographing indigenous cultures which have retained their rituals and traditions, relatively untouched by modernity and Western culture, may soon be coming to an end.

“Already at least 40 percent of the ceremonies that we photographed have disappeared,” says Carol who feels as does the professor that their museum can serve as an invaluable educational resource for future generations to see what pre-colonial African cultures looked like.

Plus, she says their work reveals a great deal about the values that were and, in some cases, still are integral to each communities’ culture. We asked Carol how she felt about the disappearance of so much of what she and Angela had documented.

She admitted that she has loved her life work and embraced the challenge of identifying and somehow reaching peoples who were way outside the mainstream of what is generally known about Africa. Fulfilling that challenge and getting to know remarkable people, most of whom had never met white people (leave alone white women) before, has been thrilling for both women.

But in a sense, Carol and Angela were pioneers whose books have exposed these marginalized peoples to the wider world. That is likely to change the whole cultural dynamics of their lives.

Carol recalls meeting one Samburu elder who requested them specifically to photograph one traditional rite of passage that only took place once every 14 years. “He told us he knew that year was likely to be the last time the ceremony was held. He understood the importance of having a record of the event so future generations of Samburu youth could learn about their culture,” she adds.

Carol had already produced two coffee table-top books before beginning work with Angela, one entitled ‘Maasai’, the other ‘Nomads of Niger’ which was all about the beautiful Wodaabe people. Angela’s one solo book is ‘Africa Adorned’. But together the two have taken their photos, videos, and books all over the world. And everywhere they have gone, it is not only their images that impress. It’s also their storytelling that intrigues people like Professor…and inspires audiences to want to learn more about Africa.

 

 

 

 

KENYAN THEATRE ROUNDUP 2020

KENYAN THEATRE SURVIVED DESPITE THE PANDEMIC

By Margaretta wa Gacheru

Nyanga, the runaway grandmother in her youth. The opera was written, directed & produced by Rhoda Ondeng Wilhelmsen and staged in November in her garden

It’s a pity that 2020 had to be so hard hit by the COVID 19 pandemic, especially as the year had started off so well. There were productions by everyone from Dr Zippy Okoth, John Sibi-Okumu and Sitawa Namwalie in semi=solo performances. There were also groups like Heartstrings Kenya and Dance Theatre Kenya staging shows that were well attended and assuring their audiences that they would be back later in the year with more quality productions. But that was not to be.

Instead, we got hit by the COVID 19 pandemic and the lockdowns that doused all those dreams. We had been promised by Nairobi Performing Arts Studio (NPAS) that they were soon to bring us Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Ngai hika ndeeda (I’ll marry when I want) both in Kikuyu and English, but even that hope was quashed as thespians were not even allowed to rehearse, except for those who didn’t mind meeting online via zoom to share their craft.

And of course, Heartstrings Kenya which produced ‘Good for Nothing’ with Bernice Nthenge, Paul Ogola, and Adelyne Wairimu as three of the many stars in the ensemble that never loses hope or energy under the direction of Sammy Mwangi. Yet even they were at loose ends like many theatre casts, crews and the theatre-loving public were.

The highpoint of the pre-pandemic year was February when many companies and individuals focused on love and the Valentine Day theme. For instance, that was when Dance Centre Kenya staged ‘Romeo and Juliet’ the ballet with the homecoming dancer Joel Kioko who returned to dance with his partner Annabel Shaw in the title roles. Kioko is a prodigy discovered by DCK’s Cooper Rust who supported and taught him as he ultimately reached the UK where he currently is a student at the English Ballet School. Theirs was a dazzling performance. But several other Kenyan soloists equally gave us a thrill when they staged singular performances.

Dr Zippy Okoth is one who performed her own autobiographical script, playing ‘Agatha’ (also Zippy’s middle name), a young woman who had smartened up since her precursor, the divorcee, shared all her woes from being married to an ungrateful, disrespectful, and ultimately violent man. Agatha even sang sweetly about her new-found freedom and that was a delight.

Sitawa Namwalie also told a marvelous story entitled “Taking my father home’ which was also scripted by the performer-poet who gave us ‘Cut of my tongue’ and ‘Silence is a woman’ in preceding years. Both she and Zippy were accompanied by subtle music that never drowned out their artful acting.

But despite the physical constraints on the theatre, many thespians found ways to keep themselves working and occupied with creative activities. Some put their focus on vocal performances. This was true of Maimouna Jallow who had been working with fellow writers and storytellers in years preceding 2020 so she was prepared to premiere the three-part Kenyan audio melodrama, ’An Accidental City’. Maimouna scripted the story; she also directed and produced with her online ‘Positively African’. That is where the episodes can be found online.

Mumbi Kaigwa also found a poetic way to utilize her voice as you had been invited by the award-winning Kenyan author, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, to produce the audio version of Yvonne’s latest novel, ‘The Dragonfly Sea’. It was a rare opportunity because not enough Kenyan writers are creating audio versions of their texts. But Mumbi captures all the emotive inflections that are embroidered beautifully in the book.

Other groups have been involved in teaching in 2020. The most notable was NPAS since Stuart Nash organized with the Ministry of Sports, Art and Heritage to offer free online acting (with Fanuel Mulwa), singing (Hellen Mtawali) and producing (with Nash) classes initially mainly for Kenyan teens. One might imagine that kids having no school would jump at the chance. And they were, but so were older Kenyans. So Stuart ultimately opened the sessions to youth aged 12 to 25. That allowed Geoffrey Karabilo, 25 to win an all-expenses paid trip to Zanzibar this month when NPAS held its fifth and final ‘Monologue Challenge’.

Finally, the most exciting production we actually see recently was Rhoda OndengWilhelmsen’s Kenyan opera, “Nyanga: Runaway Grandmother’. Rhoda scripted, directed, and produced her brilliant and beautiful opera. She merits high marks for so doing.

                                                           Nyanga with Rhoda Ondeng Wilhelmsen's orchestra 

And lastly, George Orido performed the impossible task of assembling his 2020 Sanaa Theatre Awards last Sunday night at Kenya National Theatre.

 

 

 

 

 

GLOBALIZING KENYAN CULTURE: JUA KALI & THE TRANSFORMATION OF CONTEMPORARY KENYAN ART (1960--2010)

 Globalizing Kenyan Culture: Jua Kali & the Transformation of Contemporary Kenyan Art: 1960-2010 (luc.edu)

This is my DOCTORAL DISSERTATION for which i received a Ph.D in Sociology form Loyola University Chicago. For it and for the years of study and research, I  am now entitled to be called Dr. Margaretta. It was worked for out of love for the artists of Kenya and East Africa. 

The dissertation was also transformed into a book which I retitled 'Transformation of Contemporary Kenyan Art: 1960-2010'. It's available on Amazon. 

Much has happened since 2010 and another book must be written to encompass the immense growth and development in the Kenya art world, some of which is revealed in this blog. 

HAND-WOVEN SCRAP METAL SCULPTURES AMAZE

BY Margaretta wa Gacheru (published BD Life 18.12.20)

^{Dickens Otieno was meant to be an engineer, according to his father’s dream. But this Kenyan sculptor has taken after his mother, a gifted, hard-working seamstress, instead.}

^{Dickens studied engineering for a time at Kenya Polytechnic, but he gave it up to be a full-time artist. Nonetheless, he’s found that study useful as he creates sculptures requiring internal ‘engineering’ in the form of metal wire frames that serve as skeletons to give his jackets, trousers and gowns the regal statuesque stance that enhance the dignity of each design.}

^{Currently, having his first one-man exhibition at Circle Art Gallery, Dickens has balanced his show between his shapely tapestries and his sculptures, some the size you might want to try on, others, miniatures that might otherwise appeal to little people. Either way, what’s most remarkable about his art is that he creates his own ‘fabric’ by hand, out of aluminum (and occasionally laminated paper) which he first shreds and then meticulously weaves into elegant garments or floor-to-ceiling wall hangings.}

^{Dickens’ tapestries might call to mind ones more monumentally made by the acclaimed West African artist, El Anatsui, since both men work and weave in scrap metal. But Dickens is no imitator. He’s been creating scrap metal ‘fabric’ for nearly two decades, long before he’d ever heard of the Ghanaian artist.}

^{There are similarities between the two. But what makes Dickens’ art so special is the precision with which he creates his metallic ‘threads’ and perfectly aligned weaves. Having started his career with limited funds, he began by working with materials most accessible to him, namely used beer and soda cans which are still his basic tools of trade. It is these that he first flattens, then carefully transforms into his sculptures and tapestries. For his paper sculpture, he also recycles, using glossy magazines or newspapers which he first paints, then laminates and finally slices into sturdy paper threads and weaves similarly to what he does with his slender scrap metal ‘yarns’.}

^{All the works in his Circle Art show were created this year, specifically during the lockdown when he either stayed close to home or worked some days in his studio at the GoDown’s new artists’ studios in Kilimani. Having opened November 26th, Dickens’ show will run up to December 22nd.}

^{In the meantime, at the opening, Dickens admitted to one of his admirers that he preferred creating formal wear, anything from ladies evening gowns to military men’s uniforms. These were the sorts of clothes that he grew up watching him mother make. She, like he, was meticulous about her creations. Pointing to the sewing machine at the entrance of the exhibition, Dickens says he personally never works with a sewing machine, despite his stitches invariably looking straight and tailored. “The sewing machine was my mother’s. It’s here because I think of this show as an installation dedicated to her,’ says the artist, implying the machine is there to pay homage to her legacy.}

^{Dickens’ mother passed on before she could see her son’s arts travel to exhibitions all around the world, everywhere from Nottingham and Paris to Cape Town and Dubai. In fact, Circle Art has enabled him to show his work at world-class Art Fairs as well. At the same time, he’s been invited to art residencies in Lamu and Italy.}

^{One of Dickens’ pieces that l found most fascinating is a ‘triptych’ of three tall, thin tapestries which he calls ‘skyscrapers’ since they hang side by side, each with square open spaces carefully aligned. “No, they do not each stand alone,” he tells BD Life. “They are one piece, but like skyscrapers in big cities, they stand side by side.” The window cut-outs add interest to the piece that hangs about seven feet from top to bottom.}

^{In recent times, all of Dickens’ tapestries have grown more monumental, especially as his audiences have expressed interest in those that fill whole walls. Some of them combine laminated woven paper squares or circles, which he’s stitched inside his metallic fabrics. Others mix colors geometrically while there is two that seem to tell stories with the shapeliness of his color contours.}

^{Either way, Dickens’ exhibition is a triumph for the artist whose humble beginnings, working initially in Nairobi’s Industrial Area, hasn’t stopped him from pursuing the work he loves best. What’s more, he’s carrying on a tradition established by his mother, only making his art of stitching, weaving, and structuring a genre all his own.}

MA RAINEY’S NETFLIX DEBUT

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (published Jamburi Day December 12, 2020)

In just a week’s time, the long-awaited movie, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ comes out on Netflix for all of us quarantined folks to enjoy. It’s long-awaited for several reasons. For one, it’s the last film made by the award-winning iconic (Black Panther) actor Chatwick Boseman to appear in before his untimely death last August. In ‘Ma Rainey’, Chatwick, playing Levee, a sassy young trumpet player, nearly takes away from the real star of the film, Viola Davis (‘How to get away with murder’) who leads in the title role.

What also makes the film so special is it’s the latest play-transformed-into-film, scripted by great African American playwright, the late August Wilson, whose ‘Pittsburgh Cycle’ charts the 20^th century of Black-Americans’ everyday lives in a decalogue of plays, one for every decade. What also makes Wilson’s Cycle so exceptional is that it tells ordinary people’s stories from a uniquely Black-American perspective. “They wholly ignore theatre’s dominant White gaze,’ explained one young female playwright who added that Wilson’s plays “liberated” Black writers and widened their vision of creative possibilities.

The other remarkable fact about ‘Ma Rainey’ -- apart from Viola Davis’ extraordinary make-over into a beautifully fat Blues singer who wore a ‘fat suit’ with pleasure, poise, dignity and a non-nonsense attitude that kept both her arrogant white manager and Levee, in line – is Denzel Washington’s role.

For while he and Viola both earned countless accolades for their Broadway performance in another one of Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle, ‘Fences’, following the play’s success, the playwright’s widow, Constanza Romero, asked Denzel, (now 65), to adapt all the Cycle plays to film. He agreed, and that is how he produced both ‘Fences’ (2016) and ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ (2019). (Next, we understand, he’ll produce Samuel L. Jackson and his own son, John David Washington in Wilson’s ‘The Piano Lesson’ which is set in the 1930s).

‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ is set in the 1920’s when Ma was among the first Blues singers to be recorded. Blues music had been around since the late 19^th century. It was born in the post-slavery South and is emotionally expressive of the melancholy and soul of the Black experience. The film takes place in a Chicago recording studio, up North where millions of Black people came to escape racist Jim Crow laws and hopefully find jobs in urban factories. 

Ma knows she essentially a ‘cash cow’ for the white music establishment, which is why she takes no nonsense from either her manager or her band. A big chunk of the film revolves around band members who are in the studio’s back room rehearsing and chattering, telling stories and hearing Levee’s dreams of reaching the top of the music game with what he calls his ‘new’ style of trumpeting. His arrogance is only matched by Ma’s and triggers a few volatile scenes made all the more remarkable knowing that Chatwick, like Wilson, will soon leave us, having suffered quietly with colon cancer.

The film has already earned Chatwick post-humous awards.

 

 

KIBERA ARTISTS CREATE ‘CHOKORA FASHIONS’ AT DIGITAL MEDIA FESTIVAL

Maasai Mbili is an artists’ collective that normally operates in Kibera. But for the recent Digital Media Festival, they created an installation at Alliance Francaise highlighting life on the street.

Specifically, their installation was a three-dimensional space known in Swahili as a kibanda, which is a shop found primarily in so-called slums. In this case, their kibanda belongs to ‘Kwa Viduka’ who specializes in creating ‘chokora wear’.

It was not the first time that Maasai Mbili (M2) have created such an installation, specifically one that recreates common features of slum life. “A kibande can be selling anything,” says Gomba Otieno, one of the two founding artists (and former signwriters) who launched Maasai Mbili back in 2008.

“It can be where you find anything from fresh food and hot tea to mitumba [second-hand clothes] or what we call ‘chokora wear’,” adds Gomba whose loyalty to Kibera, to art and to slum life has made him one of the most eccentric and ingenious artists in Kenya.

“We’ve taken our art everywhere from Berlin and Bayreuth to Vienna and Denmark,” he recalls. In some cases, the focus has specifically been on ‘chokora fashion’ as it is at Kwa Viduka at Alliance.

For instance, Gomba with Kevo Stero Irungu have held other ‘chokora fashion shows’ like theirs at Alliance, where models like Tola and Jano construct and then model chokora fashions right before an audience’s eyes. In so doing, they illustrate exactly what chokora fashion is.

It could be simply a pair of second-hand pants with patches or paints added. Or a pair of cut off jeans covered in a brightly patterned sliced-seamed skirt or any other sort of mitumba mix and match that the customer prefers.

The point is, says Gomba, chokora is a word that has two meanings in Sheng (Swahili slang). The root word means to dig, which is what ‘chokora’ street children do when they dig into city dumps in search of items they can sell. But ‘chokora’ can also refer to the way people dig into piles of mitumba clothing as they look for the jacket, sweater, shirt or pants that they want.

So chokora fashion is what starts with a mitumba which then gets made over [often with another mitumba piece] in ways one isn’t likely to see in downtown shops or city malls. That’s because the finishing touches on the new chokora fashion will be the designer’s made-over mitumba.

Gomba explains that chokora fashion is not for Kenyans obsessed with international brands like Gucci or Dior. But it’s definitely a style of slum fashion that produces fascinating ‘looks’.

Some of them could be seen during the Digital Media Festival in the Virtual Reality (VR) video entitled ‘African Space Makers’. M2 is one of the six ‘out of the way’ art spaces featured in the VR.

In it, Gomba and Kevo take us first to Toy Market where there are mountains of mitumba and we see the way people literally dig into them to find the precise item that suits their taste. Then we’re taken to see their M2 studio in Kibera and finally into a parking lot where a chokora fashion show is taking place. All the clothes worn by the models are chokora styles.  That means some are layered with skirts on skirts draped with torn jackets, others are patched and painted, while others are straight from the mitumba heaps, washed, pressed and worn under a chokora-labeled shirt.

So with M2 having received a significant place in the longest of the three virtual reality films in the festival, it was no wonder that they were selected to lend a lot of color and interest to the festival and to cover two of AF’s ground floor walls with not only ‘Chokora Wear Kwa Viduka’, but also works by other members of M2 like Mbuthia Maina, Anita Kavochy, Kevo, Gomba and several M2 newcomers.

“There are always new people coming to us, and we welcome them,” says Gomba who explains that while it wasn’t easy, but M2 managed to raise funds to buy their Kibera studio, which is one reason why they are happy to share what they have.

“We like to show people that artists don’t need to be poor,” he says, noting that he never intends to move out of Kibera. Even if he became a rich man, he says, Kibera is where his loyalty lies and he’s happy to demystify the meaning of slum since for him, it is home.

 

GRANDMA’S OPERA COMES HOME TO KENYA

Nyanga (Lyndie Shinyega) and her sister Okoko (Mary Gichu) in the opera "Nyanga: Runaway Grandmother'

By Margaretta wa Gacheru

 Opera was something Rhoda Achieng-Ondeng was destined to do from the time she was seven years old when her Scottish school teacher spotted her vocal talent and sent her straight on stage with a song that this professional soprano still recalls.

Rhoda also remembers the sweet songs that her maternal grandmother Nyanga would sing when, as a child, she’d sit at the ancient storyteller’s feet, listening as she told of how she had run away from home as a young girl, was ‘found’ by Canadian missionaries who turned her humble life upside down.

It’s the ‘runaway’ grandmother’s story that Rhoda first wrote down with a view to its one day becoming Kenya’s second indigenous opera. The first was ‘Ondieki the Fisherman’ composed by her former English teacher, Francis Chandler.

“It was Mr. Chandler that I sought out when I finally decided it was time for Nyanga’s story to become an opera,” says Rhoda who has been a professional opera singer since she left University of Oregon with two master’s degree in Music.

She spoke to BD just before re-staging excerpts of the full opera, ‘Nyanga: Runaway Grandmother’ last Thursday, November 26, in Lavington at her Baraka Opera Trust Performing Arts Centre which she built since returning to Kenya from Norway early this millennium.

“We were to perform another set of excerpts December 8th in Kisumu County at the Ciala Resort,” Rhoda says, adding she and her opera were invited by Kisumu County Governor Professor Anyang’ Nyong’o. “But sadly, the performance and the entire Festival was cancelled,” she adds.

Surprisingly, Rhoda chose not to take a major role in her opera, appearing gracefully at the outset and the end, singing Nyanga’s song. One reason for this is because she wanted to look after every aspect of the production, from the chamber orchestra and conductor (Levi Wataka) to the vocal training of scores of singers (by Ciru James). But she left all the other show details with Michael James who, like Rhoda, has been back and forth between Kenya and Europe for many years.

“Mike actually accompanied me on piano when I sang at Starehe Boys and I was schooling at Limuru Girls,” says Rhoda, who married Norwegian Ingvard Wilhelmsen and has lived abroad ever since. “But I try to come back to Kenya every year,” she adds.

“I’ve always wanted to return and introduce Kenyans to opera,” she says, knowing that opera probably seems alien, even elitist to many.

“But that is why I want to demystify it so people can see opera as a vehicle for sharing Kenyans’ stories.” In this case, she says Nyanga is in English mixed with bits of Dholuo and Kiswahili.

Having auditioned many Kenyans for the show, she’s found the vocal talents of young people tremendous ‘Every character was cast with an understudy,” she says, noting that her grandmother was played last Thursday by both Lyndie Shinyega and May Ombara (her understudy).

Serving as both opera producer and director, Rhoda has staged extracts of Nyanga twice before, once November 6th at her Centre and again November 8th when she involved award-winning writer Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor to help her lead a program to discuss “Music Meets Literature’.

“We always practice social distancing during our performances, but it’s also helpful that we have had them all outdoors,’ she adds.

Rhoda has previously kept a relatively low profile when she’s been back in Kenya. Yet she still gets recognized for the first-prize performances she gave during past Schools Drama Festivals. It was in 2014 when she set up the Baraka Opera Trust to begin to realize her dream of bringing opera home to Kenya.

Before it was cancelled, December 8 was to be a special occasion since ‘Nyanga’ was to be part of the larger Kusi Festival which would have embraced an array of artists from East and Central Africa.

“The Festival was created by President Paul Kagame [of Rwanda] who wanted to create an event where ideas from all over the region could be shared,” Rhoda says.

“Normally the festival moves from country to country every year and this is Kenya’s year.”

Rhoda hopes to take Nyanga around to other parts of the country on her mission to familiar Kenyans with opera. But that plan is on hold for now.

“Opera is costly and since we always pay our musicians, we are fund-raising, even now,” Rhoda admits.

‘We also want to illustrate high professional standards by our actions since that’s what we know Kenyan artists deserve.”

Sex and the City' Accused of Blasphemy 2014

'Sex and the City' exhibition by Michael Soi, Thom Ogonga and John Kamicha accused of 'blasphemy

Published April 14, 2014 in This is Africa

I wrote this story in 2014 prior to my setting up this archive-blog. Guess what? I found it via google at a website assembled by some guy named 'Neo-Griot'. And guess what! he republished my whole story, including my photos giving me NO CREDIT, not a mention of wa Gacheru who wrote the story and took all the photos. I should be grateful to him for stealing my story since i might have lost it and see how interesting it is. .

“Sex and the City”

accused of blasphemy

Kenyan artists are not afraid to ruffle feathers, but even they were surprised by the ferocity of the reactions generated by the paintings they exhibited in a show “Sex and the City”, with accusations of blasphemy and demands that the paintings be removed.

Michael Soi with his painting “See No Evil”

Kenyan artists Michael Soi, Thom Ogonga and John Kamicha enjoy creating provocative art that unsettles the status quo. They also don’t shy away from producing paintings that challenge the public to think deeply about the social issues behind their imagery. Which of course means not everyone likes what they produce, and that includes the paintings on display at Alliance Francaise Nairobi since the 3rd April in a show titled “Sex and the City”.

Some of those who saw the exhibition found it distasteful and disturbing. That sort of reaction doesn’t fluster the artists one bit. In fact, they quite like being attacked in the public sphere for violating the conventional sense of propriety. They know their fans outnumber the moral critics, including those that tried to have Sex and the City shut down. Soi, Ogonga and Kamicha don’t mind when they are told their art is ‘in bad taste’, especially since Ogonga and Soi began doing ‘research’ in the bars and back streets of Nairobi, exploring what goes on after dark when people who are out at that hour believe ‘nobody’s looking’. It’s those indiscreet moments that Soi and Ogonga enjoy employing in their art.

What goes on when expatriates end up at bars where African women are agile pole dancers

Painting without sensationalism, all three artists in the show have a flair for exposing sides of their city few people know much about and those who are familiar with these nocturnal activities prefer to keep quiet about the part they play in those aspects of Nairobi night life, for obvious reasons.

Many of us appreciate the freshness and honesty of their paintings, especially as their art can be seen as chronicling current social realities. That includes phenomena like what goes on when expatriates end up at bars where African women are agile pole dancers.

For instance, a painting like Soi’s See no Evil portrays several themes that the artist is currently examining artistically, such as the voyeuristic nature of Nairobi club life and interracial relations both between white or Asian men and African women and between white women and young African men.

Omari and his Women. © Michael Soi

One such African man in Soi’s work actually has a name. It’s Omari and he has become a recurring subject in a number of Soi’s most recent paintings. His exploits with women (both white and black) as portrayed by Soi reveal the sort of storytelling style that the artist has become notable for.

Ogonga also tells stories with his nightlife paintings, although his images seem more innocuous at first glance and he paints his subjects to look quite beautiful. Until you realise the women in particular might be that attractively dressed because of the sort of nightly business that they’re in, which involves attracting well-to-do men, be they white, black or brown.

Thom Ogonga with his painting “Slow Night”

But for all the controversy that may have raged around Sex and the City, none has been as ferocious or censorial as that generated by the art of Kamicha.

The vociferous charge that the artist was ‘blasphemous’ derived from one specific painting by which fundamentalist Christians were deeply offended.

John Kamicha with his painting “Last Supper”

Having seen Kamicha’s collage titled Sex Retreat on Facebook the night before the show opened, a squad of Christian censors virtually stormed Alliance Francaise demanding that the painting be removed. What they couldn’t stand was a suggestive image they believed to be Jesus Christ surrounded by semi-nude women and other images they felt were anti-Christ-like.

The painting that ruffled the most feathers: “Sex Retreat” by John Kimachi

Fortunately, the artist was on hand when AF cultural coordinator Harsita Waters was being confronted by the moralists who were insisting the collage be removed.

The artist who hadn’t expected such a violent reaction was willing to comply, but many people have complained ever since that the fundamentalists were violating not only the artist’s right to express himself freely but also the public’s right to see what Kamicha had to say.

Kamicha with “The Politician”

“No artist has ever seen Christ”

In an interview with this writer a few moments before the opening, the artist explained he was reacting to a story in the local media about so-called Christian pastors who take their flock on ‘sex retreats’. He was appalled by the hypocrisy and deceit of supposedly holy men; but he stressed that the image at the centre of his collage was not Jesus Christ. “No artist has ever seen Christ. The images we see and maybe believe look like Jesus are only interpretations. My intention was not to blaspheme Christ but to illustrate my disgust with deceitful priests who exploit their members, especially women.”

Using art to make a satirical social statement is something all three artists do, and something the public surely deserves to see, especially as it allows many to appreciate how relevant art can be to their everyday lives.

 

>via: http://thisisafrica.me/lifestyle/sex-city-accused-blasp

Sergei Polunin, "Take Me to Church" by Hozier, Directed by David LaChapelle

Recommended to me by Mary Collis, Nov. 18, 2020 beautiful

ANCIENT AFRICAN MASK BRINGS THE PAST INTO THE PRESENT

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted November 15m 2020)

Syowia Kyambi took us on a fascinating journey last Saturday night, outdoors at Circle Art Gallery as she prepared us to watch her new video installation entitled ‘Kaspale’s Playground’.

Initially working with a musical slide show, Kyambi introduced us to her complex creative process. It included her travels from Kenya and Tanzania to Germany, Norway and Mexico and finally back to Kenya. It became a visual prologue to her video, enabling us to witness the inspired creation of her imaginary character, Kaspale.

The project began as a commission from the Markk Museum of Hamburg, Germany which had previously been known as the Hamburg Ethnography Museum. The renaming reflected an awareness that a deeper decolonizing process might require the intervention of an indigenous African artist like Kyambi.

The museum was linked to a botanical research centre established by the Germans in Tanzania in 1902. The Amani Centre itself had not been in use for years. But it contained archives the Germans apparently hoped Kyambi might translate into an interesting installation, which is exactly what she did.

“The commission probably came as a result of my previous work with museum archival materials,” said the artist.

It was while exploring those archives that Kyambi came across an ancient clay mask which had been classified among Makonde masks and sculptures.

“No one in the museum knew where it was from,” recalled the artist who was intrigued by the ancient African mask. So intrigued in fact that it became ‘Kaspale’ or the trickster. She explained that ‘Kas’ was the prefix of a German word meaning trickster, joker, or shadow. And ‘pale’ referred to the Swahili term for an indefinite ‘over there’ which is where Kaspale came from.

In any case, Kyambi ended up using many of the archival photos that she found at the museum and injecting Kaspale into a number of them.

“Kaspale’s [amusing] intrusion into the images revealed the problematic character of ethnographic museums,” said Kyambi. The implication being that the ethnographic approach to African culture was a product of colonial thought which viewed the ‘Native’ as ‘other’ and subordinate.

The artist went on to peruse ethnographic archives in Norway. Then finally, in Mexico, she created a more comprehensive narrative around Kaspale. It’s the story that Kyambi performed in ‘Kaspale’s Playground.’

At every step in her journey, her trickster’s character developed and deepened. It led to Kyambi creating an ‘origins’ story for Kaspale and her/his clan. (“Kaspale’s gender is fluid,” remarked the artist.)

Creating a series of clay Kaspale-kin masks, Kyambi sees the clan’s beginnings as being in the murky mangrove swamps of Mexico. Kaspale’s character now takes the shape of both masks and puppets.

In the film, Kyambi wears the mask, effectively becoming Kaspale who is also reincarnate as a miniature puppet whose shadow lives in the swamps, fields and finally in the demonstrations in which the trickster ultimately gets serious and actively resists the colonial and neocolonial residue that still exists in the region.

Having worked closely with videographer Kibe Wangunyu who created a kaleidoscopic visual backdrop for Kyambi and Kaspale to move about, the artist, dressed all in white, makes a frantic run through time and space until they arrive in Kenya.

Now using contemporary archival images, it would seem that Kaspale cannot only transcend space and time. The bearer of the mask, namely Kyambi, can also embody the trickster’s spirit of resistance.

Having now arrived in Kenya in 1992, it’s the Mothers’ protest movement that has drawn Kaspale/Kyambi to identify with the mothers whose sons were detained at Nyayo House in the notorious underground torture chambers.

The mothers had been joined by Professor Wangari Maathai whose presence and brutal beating by the Kenyan police attracted global attention to the mothers’ cause.

But ultimately, it was the mothers’ naked act of resistance to the police brutality and State oppression that roused world attention and finally led to the sons’ release.

The mothers’ nakedness, in local culture, embodied a ferocious curse by the women on their oppressors. It’s also what inspired the performance artist Kyambi to re-enact the mothers’ stunning curse in the film.

Kyambi’s nakedness might have shocked those who didn’t understand the depth of the deed’s meaning. Yet the strength of the curse and selfless courage of the women who put their lives on the line to save their sons, finally inspired Kyambi to act in solidarity with the mothers and bring Kaspale’s story back home to Kenya.

Here’s hoping Kaspale makes many more trips to archives to bring the forgotten past to our presence of mind.

ZOOMED ‘MONOLOGUE CHALLENGE’ PROVED TALENTS ARE FINE-TUNING

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (November 2020)

The Fourth Monologue Challenge took place this past weekend on the first day of November via zoom.

The creation of the Nairobi Performing Arts Studio with support from the Ministry of Culture, the Challenge has grown out of free acting, singing and production classes for children which began shortly after Kenya got shutdown by the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was the shutdown of schools that got NPAS founder and artistic director, Stuart Nash concerned about not just the kids, but their parents. How were they to keep their children engaged when the virus had obliterated what had previously been the ‘normal’ routine for children and parents alike?

What was stunning to Stuart was the rapid response he received once he put posters up on social media advertising his free classes. They began last April and have been running virtually non-stop ever since.

Starting with just three teachers, Fanuel Mulwa for Acting, Hellen Mtawali for Singing, and Stuart himself running the production classes, the NPAS classes attracted children starting from age 7 on up to 19.

“There are many requests for us to open a class for adults, but our intention was primarily to serve the kids,” Stuart says.

The NPAS director doesn’t speak much about all the notes of appreciation that he has received from parents. Their gratitude has been boundless, not only because their child is occupied in such a constructive and creative way, but also because the parents get to live vicariously through their child’s performance.

Many Kenyan parents have taken part in Schools and Colleges Drama Festival productions in the past. They have delighted in the theatrical experience they gained back then. But as Kenya’s entertainment industry was still underdeveloped, they had nowhere to go professionally once they had graduated from whichever institution had performed for.

The problem of getting “bit by the theatre bug” is a difficult one, especially when there were no professional, money-making careers open in the entertainment arts.

Yet that situation has changed dramatically in the last decade, not only in the field of live theatre but also in television and film. Now we have new and dynamic industries in film, television and even in live performance. Live music has been doing relatively well for years. And even stand-up comedy has come alive as exemplified by Churchill Live.

But live theatre has been struggling for years. Fortunately, a theatre-going audience has gradually grown as was seen in pre-pandemic days when groups like Heartstrings Kenya! and Millez Productions brought comedies and social commentaries to the Nairobi stage.

But a qualitative change has taken place with the coming of NPAS which has produced professional shows like Jesus Christ Superstar, Grease, and Sarafina among others. Casts and crews have been paid, even as the Studio’s students have learned valuable hands-on skills in the process of productions.

So by taking the best of NPAS for free out to children, Stuart and his crew have given kids and parents new views of the opportunities opening up in Kenya’s fledgling entertainment industry.