OKELLO FINDS HIS WAY BACK TO HIMSELF, THE ARTIST

Story by Margaretta wa Gacheru (written June 26, 2022)

Anthony Okello has been described as “one of the most important artists of his generation.” I would go further and say Okello is one of the most important artists in the region, especially for his epoch series of paintings which examined the mythologies and cultural identities of several Kenyan communities, namely the Luo, Kikuyu, and Taita people.  

Taking on the role of cultural chronicler was a challenge Okello has relished, even if he didn’t identify himself as such. His ‘Masquerade Series’ projected an idiom that resonated well with the political and social climate of the times, when duplicity was all-pervasive, and masks were meant to hide the criminality of crooks in high office.

Okello’s latest series of works is in his current solo show at One Off Gallery entitled ‘Between Losing and Finding’.

“I’m not making a statement in this series,” he tells BD Life a day after the exhibition opened on June 25^th. “I’m asking a question,” he says. And that query is the title of five works in the exhibition that runs for a month, until July 24^th.

In his typically elusive style, he doesn’t explain what his title “Which Side?” refers to. “It could be many things,” he says. It might refer to politics, religion, ethnicity, or any other contested topic that wafts through the cultural atmosphere at any time. “It’s true, I’m not done with this series,” he adds.

The series definitely leaves one wondering what do all of these portraits have in common? They are all men, one wearing a Muslim cap, one a young man in a chartreuse t-shirt, one a businessman wearing a three-piece suit, one in a straw hat, and one in a bright orange vest.

Okello leaves us guessing as he explains the secret to this exhibition is in the title, ‘Between Losing and Finding.’ He has lost people close to his heart but he doesn’t want to talk about that. Suffice it to say, he has struggled emotionally to find his way back to being himself, he says. And that is to being an artist.

That struggle is best expressed in his oil painting entitled ‘Heaviness’. It’s the first one you see as you walk into The Loft and see a beautifully beheaded body wearing a black, red, and gold striped suit. It doesn’t instantly hit you that the stripes are meant to suggest someone’s in jail. But the more one ponders the painting, one sees two shadowy beings in the background of the work. “They exist in the mind of the [beheaded] one,” Okello says, giving us a hint that the one wearing the stipes is himself, and the two behind might be the spirit of those whom he’s lost. Their loss is apparently the basis of the ‘heaviness’ of his heart and the reason he’s named this particular painting.

At the other end of the gallery is ‘Entertainers on Tour’. Filled with musical cows, including several crooning through their microphones, it looks antithetical to the previous painting which registers pain while this one resounds with pleasure.

“I’m living in Athi River where there are lots of musicians around who are always making music,” he says. “I think that’s where that painting came from,” he guesses. Nonetheless, he’s almost apologetic about the work. “I’m only using color in the piece to cover up what I’m really feeling,” he adds, alluding to the muted hues in the painting.

“What’s more important than color is light and dark,” he continues. “It’s about black and white. Life itself is never about color; it’s about shading.”

So Okello now speaks as someone who has picked a side, the side of shading over color.  Yet virtually all the works in this show are suffused with color. Okello has a point, however, if one examines a work like ‘Prayer Pearls’ in which the white pearls have the greatest impact in a painting that is otherwise dark. In ‘Their Glorious Selves’, all eyes are instantly drawn to the man with the white turban and to the whites in his and his friend’s eyes.

“it’s a matter of technique,” he says. “I drew the sketch for ‘Prayer pearls’ some 15 years ago, but I didn’t have the technique to complete it until now,” he claims.

Yet some of us who knew his work 15 years back will disagree with Okello. That was when he was painting his surrealistic mythologies and telling visual stories that made us hope he’d do the same for all the communities in Kenya, which someday maybe he will.

ESTHER KEEPS OUR ATTENTION 3 MONTHS IN A ROW

 CONFIDENCE AND DAD COMPELLS ESTHER TO LAUGH

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (wrote 25 June 2022)

Esther Kahuho no longer markets herself as a stand-up comedian. She doesn’t need to since, over the past three months since she started performing at Kenya Cultural Centre, we’ve come to know her more as the ‘man-made woman’ and ‘Madam President’.

But the term stand-up comedian doesn’t really apply to Esther anyway since she rarely stands up long enough to look like the typical chatty comedian.

She’s chatty all right, but she also performs like a hyper-caffeinated comedian whose level of energy is stratospheric. From the moment she steps out on stage, she’s on the move, telling stories as she dashes from one end of the platform to the other.

What’s astounding is that she has appeared the last three months, including last Saturday night, giving three different versions of ‘the man-made woman’. It was mainly out of curiosity that I went to see her for a third time. I’d wondered whether she had anything new to tell me.

Turns out, she did. Esther’s a hilarious storyteller, mixing English and Swahili, and staying close to life experiences that us locals can easily relate to. The last time we met her (in May), she told stories about dating Kenyan men that sounded credible but also crazy, especially as she is so demonstrative in explaining whatever’s gone on in her life.

Previously, I’d noted that one reason for her success is her ability to reel off stories that come straight from her life experience. But seriously, do they really? This woman clearly has a fertile imagination and every tale and anecdote that she tells could be made up for our benefit. Who knows!

Questioning the historicity or fantasy of her stories derives directly from what she shared last weekend as she told stories about trying to get a job and struggling with interviews and her lack of credentials and qualifications.

She claimed she loved her first job, working in a bar (as opposed to a lounge) in Kangemi. But when her daughter came home with a school assignment, asking her to write about what her mother did for a living, Esther realized she needed to get a real nine-to-five job. She went for a range of interviews, but the only one that panned out was insurance.

That’s when she lifted the curtain on her secret trick. The secret to success, she said, was confidence, confidence as distinguished from lies!

That’s when the serious fun began. She reminded us of the politician who’s having problems with people challenging his academic qualifications which he had claimed ‘with confidence’ were credentials he had earned.  Yet was he speaking with confidence or was he lying?

This was the only time she got political in her monologue. She recalled another politician who’d told stories with confidence about the Head of State, but weren’t his stories a pack of lies?

She didn’t confirm one way or the other. But she did describe how she got her insurance job without credentials. It was by conniving boldly, confidently crafting a credible story, but which ultimately got figured out. She didn’t get the sack, but she was demoted.

So, possibly all three monologues by Esther (one shared every month since April) are wonderful fictions that she and her director, Dennis Ndenga, fabricated to keep her audience with her and on their toes.

What is certainly true about Esther is that she may pretend to be confident, but on Saturday night, she also shared self-reflective moments when she showed her personal insecurities. It was while waiting her turn for a job interview in which she knew she was in over her head. She’d fly off into a corner and muse about the misfortune of not being good enough to do this work. And don’t we all have those kinds of moments when we admit our insecurities to ourselves and wonder what can we do next? How can we go on?

Esther revealed another secret of her success after that. Inadvertently, it also answered a question I’d had from the outset: why would such a dynamic woman call herself “man-made”? Well, the answer has to do with her dad. He’s the one who saw the girl’s artistic talents which came mainly out of her mouth. So, Dad’s the man and we her audience are evidence of her credible and hilarious gift of the gab!  

CELEBRATING BANANA HILL ART GALLERY

By Margaretta wa Gacheru 18.june 2022

There were good vibrations had by all who had come to Banana Hill Art Gallery last weekend to celebrate 30 years since the Gallery was founded.

It has risen out of ashes wrought by feuding artists in a tussle for power and assumed sums of cash that actually didn’t exist. But isn’t that what wars are often fought over, namely imagined riches that narcissists believe must belong to themselves, but in fact, are only delusions in mad men’s mortal minds.

In any case, the Banana Hill Gallery came into being after the dust settled, and the children ran away. These were the young men who believed they were entitled to names and numbers that others had earned but which they felt entitled to as well.

The one who founded Banana Hill Art Studio was Shine Tani, a former street acrobat who learned to paint from an older brother and discovered Watatu Gallery while doing somersaults in City Centre.

Shine had the guts to walk into Watatu one day with a few scraps of paper on which he had made his first marks as an aspiring painter. They were rejected by Ruth Schaffner, the new owner of Watatu. But as she was interested in meeting more aspirants, she gave him pens, paint, and a brush for him to go home with.

“After a year and a half, my first painting sold,” Shine told BDLife a few days after the Saturday celebrations.

It was after he had made a few sales and attracted several relatives to follow his lead that he met Rahab of Lari village, who fell madly for her new artist friend. The two of them would romantically run away together (she was just 15) and then build their new home, a tiny house in Banana Hill.

In those early years, their house turned into a commune where would-be artists came to learn how to become real-life painters like Shine. Being a generous and humble man, this patient patriarch had no problem sharing his skills and introducing a few of them to Mrs Schaffner, the German economist and Los Angeles gallerist who aimed to ‘invent’ East African art in her own image and likeness.

But as soon as Shine’s studio gained a bit of attention from the media, donors announced they might consider giving Shine funds to engage in this social project or that one.

That is when the trouble began. Funds in Shine’s pockets were only a rumor, nothing more. But the youngsters sought it, sight unseen. That is when Shine decided to pull out of the commotion. Rahab and he would do their own thing and leave the others to war as they wished.

Thereafter, the commotion died. So did the artworks as the other young men couldn’t yet stand on their own. This is when the goats and the sheep got sorted, and the better half went back to Shine and asked him to start his own gallery. They would like to join.

And so those who were disgruntled had no choice. Left alone, they were soon to recall that the one who had given them their first paint brush was Shine at the Studio.

By then, the Banana Hill Gallery was born with Shine the manager and CEO, and Rahab his Deputy.

And so, it has been up to now. It was a celebration of them last weekend that brought together in Kenyan artists from all over town. They came from Ngecha and Kuona Trust, Karen Village and the GoDown, Alliance Francaise, Dust Depot, and Paa ya Paa. Even the chief curator from Nairobi National Gallery, Lydia Galavu, showed up to share the good will.

And the day wouldn’t have been complete without representation from the Sane Wadu Foundation. Sane and Eunice were among the first to arrive, having come all the way from Naivasha. And even the new Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute (NCAI) gave the Gallery a nod.

But the day was historic not just because it brought so many Kenyan artists together. It was also the moment when Elimo Njau and Shine Tani met.

“I’ve never been to Banana Hill Gallery before,” confessed Elimo, 89. He also didn’t know how much he had inspired Shine and so many other Kenyan artists who respected Elimo for being among the first Africans to co-found an art gallery. Paa ya Paa was started in 1965 by six men and women, among them Jonathan Kariara, Terry Hirst and Elimo. Shine was only the second African to start an art gallery of his own.

 

 

PRINTMAKING GAINS PROMINENCE AT THE GODOWN

 By Margaretta wa Gacheru (June 23, 2022)

Ever since The GoDown moved from its spacious home in Industrial Area to Kilimani, they have kept a relatively low profile. The plan was to build a magnificent multimedia cultural centre where the old digs used to be, and remain in genial suburbia only until the new centre was complete.

The ‘new’ GoDown is a shadow in size compared to the original site. But it’s been big enough to set up several studios for artists, host a range of artistic workshops, and lately to even have ‘pop-up’ art exhibitions like the one held last Thursday, June 23^rd curated by Thom Ogonga.

“We invited Thom to curate the exhibition since Peterson [Kamwathi] was going to be running a one-day print-making workshop the same day,” Catherine Mujomba told BD Life. “The idea was they [the exhibition and the workshop] would complement one another,” she added.

It’s true that both Ogonga and Kamwathi are printmakers who have worked together in the past. Both have also run workshops for many young Kenyan artists, so it definitely made sense.

Yet GoDown has only recently begun to mount exhibitions, largely because of its lack of space. But they managed to conveniently rig up a series of see-through wire panels on which to hang Ogonga’s choice of prints. Meanwhile, towards the back end of the grounds, Kamwathi spent the day with a team of young Kenyan painters from Mukuru Art Club.  

“The painters from Mukuru Art Club had never done printmaking before, so the workshop was an opportunity for them to learn new techniques,” Joy Mboya, GoDown’s founder and CEO, told her audience as she introduced Kamwathi to those who’d come to see the artwork and the artists as well.

And thanks to Kamwathi’s talent for teaching, the day-long workshop resulted in construction of a second mini-print exhibition made up of woodcut prints produced by the Mukuru painters.

“Among them could be the next generation of Kenyan print-makers,” opined Joy who added that one project the GoDown aims to achieve is knowledge transfer from one generation to the next.

Workshops have been an important means of transferring that information. As Joy observed, for many aspiring printmakers, there previously weren’t art institutions where they could learn new techniques.

Kamwathi expounded on that fact, noting that he had never learned about printmaking in art school. But he had attended printmaking workshops where experienced printers were able to share their skills. “That’s one reason I like the workshop experience,” he said. “It’s a communal experience in which everybody shares.”

Ogonga also built upon that point. He noted that seven of the nine artists in the pop-up show were good friends who shared everything from materials to ideas. “We [meaning the seven] recently had a pop-up print exhibition [at One Off Gallery earlier this year]. But none of what was in that show is on display here,” he added.

The seven include himself, Kamwathi, Dennis Muraguri, Wanjohi Maina, Mari Endo, James Mweu, and Patrick Karanja. “We brought in two more women for this show,” says Ogongo, referring to Elena Akware and Ndunda Bulima.

Thom added that there are many styles and techniques that operate on the printmaking platform. In this show alone, there are mainly woodcut prints, but there are also etchings [by Kamwathi], screen prints [Wanjohi Maina], and a technique Patrick Karanja calls collagraphy which is making a print from a collage..

In any case, the diversity of the techniques doesn’t discount the fact that prints are an art form that is more accessible or at least more affordable than a painting of which there is only one-of-a-kind. With prints, you can reproduce many or few of the same image you have carved or etched.

Kamwathi gave us a short history lesson as he addressed an audience that had come for the pop-up. He noted that long before Rembrandt was making prints and seeing his art ‘go viral’ as his prints circulated all over the Western world of his time, the Chinese were creating woodcut prints thousands of years before him.

One of the recipients of Kamwathi’s wisdom that day was the esteemed sculptor, Elkana Ong’esa who had been attending another workshop at the GoDown. “But when he heard Kamwathi was giving his day-long training, he decided to stick around and participate,” said Ms Mujomba.

Kamwathi welcomed the Elder statesman of Kisii stone sculpture to his workshop, in the same spirit of sharing that he showed aspiring artists what he called ‘the basics’ of the art.

 

THE AGONY AND ECSTASY OF BUILDING A HOUSE IN KITENGELA

 By Margaretta wa Gacheru (written June 18, 2022)

When have you ever seen a play that elicited both agony and ecstasy simultaneously?

Well, I did last week, watching Fred Mbogo’s ‘How to build a house in Kitengela’ at Kenya Cultural Centre.

If you had seen the show’s title on social media and supposed you might like to learn how to do exactly that; or you planned one day to build a house of your own, and thought you might pick up a few tips by watching the play, then forget it.

There is a house in Kitengela in the play, all right. A house that supposedly cost Omari (William Ondiege) and Monica (Apiophice Mwenda) Sh17 million to obtain. But that is not the most egregious fact told to Kimondo (Gitura Kamau) by the couple to explain where exactly his KSH43 million went.

Kimondo had come home from South Africa just to be in the Sh43 million blockbuster movie that Omari had supposedly scripted and Kimondo was set to star in. He had been a successful film and sit-com star down south, but the lure of working with an old friend and becoming a Big Fish back home brought him back.

Kimondo’s arrival at Omari’s Juzi Juzi Productions office seems to take Omari by surprise. He hesitates to tell his friend what has happened to the Ksh43 million. He is only prepared to speak of the ‘challenges’ that had to be faced once the money arrived.

Chemistry between the two actors is palpable. They had been on stage together years ago, but their theatrical kinship came alive as Kimondo and Omari also hadn’t seen each other for a while. Kimondo’s missing button on his jeans serves as a fair (and fun) distraction enabling Omari to avoid explaining the whereabout of the multi-millions. It also lightens the moment before Omari starts punching holes in Kimondo’s dream of being a blockbuster film star.

Kimondo doesn’t seem to care that his buttonless jeans are exposing his red, white, and blue underwear. He has fun toying with Omari’s obvious homophobia, an attitude less prevalent down south where same-sex marriage is legal and has been since 2006.

But once he realizes his friend is being evasive about the 43 million, he pulls out his whisky jug and quietly starts drinking as if to signal his impending anxiety. This is when the agony starts to set in, both for Kimondo and for me. This is when Mbogo brilliantly lays out the argument (which begins as a light rain, grows into a hurricane) in a low-key style of how corruption has become endemic in Kenyan society. It’s not just a problem at the top, although the taxman, upon hearing about the 43 mill, comes running to eat up several million of the film budget.

It seems that everybody needs their cut in the funds that have come in to make the film. They include everyone from KRA and Customs to the landlord and Omari’s office manager Monica (Apoiphice Mwenda) who turns out to also be Omari’s wife. Turning out to be the most ferocious fighter in favor of ‘eating’ at every chance, she ensured (with Omari’s mousy compliance) that after deductions for all of the above expenses, there was still enough to cover the cost of their marriage, her deceased mother’s hospital bills, and ultimately, even their house in Kitengela which Omari says cost Sh17 million.

Watching--and wincing with Kimondo—as first Omari and then Monica explains every single deduction, what is clear is that everyone needed their cut. And by implication, one feels we are witnessing what is Kenya’s current reality, that corruption and kickbacks have become common place even among ordinary Kenyans.

What’s agonizing about ‘How to build…’ is the way Mbogo intentionally builds the tension between Kimondo whose outrage grows gradually with news of each deduction from the 43, and Omari.

But the really heated battle gets played out between Kimondo and Monica who is tough as nails when it comes to justifying their personal expenditures, including their eight-bedroom house in Kitengela. The mental sparring between the two gets fierce and personal. She accuses him of growing up the son of a rich man who’s never known poverty. He accuses her of having a history of sleeping with rich older men who help her get where she wants to go socially.

Ultimately, it's Kimondo who challenges the mindset that excuses greed and ignores morality and ethics, while Monica believes wholeheartedly it’s her ‘turn to eat.’ At the last moment, however, it looks like all three are prepared to go back to square one.

SIMP STIRS SYMPATHIES FOR THE GIRL CHILD AND SINGLE MOM

 By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted June 20, 2022)

Kenyan playwrights have apparently taken up the habit of naming their plays with mystifying titles, like “I am not a Simp: I respect women.’

Under his breath, I think I heard that phrase uttered by the rapist in the play, Pastor Zebede (Evans Katana) who was Prof Zebedayo when he assaulted his student Stephanie (Cheryl Margie) whom we learn towards the play’s end, is also her father, having raped her mother before her. Nonetheless, it’s never clearly revealed what a ‘simp’ is.

What we do know is that ‘Simp’ is essentially Stephanie’s story. She’s a woman (Miriam Ingasiani) about to be executed for the crime of allowing her twins to be injected with the AIDS virus and thus become human guinea pigs. The executioner is one of the twins, Caine (Brian Ngugi). He wants revenge against her for giving him the dreaded disease. But he’s stopped by his twin, Abel (Matthew Ngugi) who wants to hear her side of the story.

In real life, an execution can’t be stopped to hear the convicted one’s version of the case. But justice, according to Waswa, allows the rest of his play to be mostly a flashback on how the mother’s hopes and dreams got shattered. Nonetheless, she tried her best to give the boys a good life.

Her story essentially aims to reveal the plight of an ordinary woman, a single mother, in our society today. Stephanie also wants her sons to understand how she could have relieved herself of much pain if she hadn’t cared for them as she did. As she says, she could’ve aborted them, let them be adopted, or dumped them in the trash. She could’ve rejected the chance to see them grow up with a nice roof over their heads, good food, good education, with only a minimal risk of dying young from AIDS.

She didn’t do any of that. Instead, after being thrown out of her mother’s home for having twins instead of a university degree, and finding no jobs, she takes to prostitution. But her run in with gang rapists (one of whom was her dad, the teacher) leads her to pursue her last resort. That is to allow her twins be injected with the HIV/AIDS virus.

Waswa’s script has countless twists and turns to it. In the process, he injects brilliant vocalists and even better dancers, the first one being Stephanie (number two, Cheryl Margie). She’s an incredible dancer whose display of both athleticism and eroticism prove this girl could go far if professionally trained. She gets accepted for dance studies but her dreams are thwarted by her mom who insists she go to university and study CRE, not dance. In her frustration, she skips her final exam, and goes to perform outside instead. After that, she has only one recourse to getting a passing grade. She takes it. So, does his sexual assault on her constitute rape or mutual compliance? Either way, it gives her twins and nowhere to go except to the streets to keep herself and her sons alive. The violent gang rape that she experiences there (by Stephanie #3, Purity Muthoni) is just one of the numerous sexually explosive mimed scenes in the play. This one illustrates how precarious a lifestyle prostitution really is, with or without twins to care for.

It's in her quest to find security for herself and her boys that she meets the medic who promises her a well-funded future if she allows him to turn the twins into human guinea pigs. Her decision, seen in this context, makes more sense. What isn’t clear is how the boys get adopted by Jabali and Tina, and how Stephanie senior serves as their nanny for twenty years. What’s also unclear is why the cops show up one day looking for the man called Judas whose crime apparently was getting human babies to be used for medical experimentation. Somehow Stephanie is implicated with him and the Court finds their crimes so heinous they are both sentenced to die (in a poorly designed execution chamber).

Ultimately, Waswa turns off the lights just before Caine re-asserts his desire to execute his mom, so we technically don’t know if he did it or not.

Either way, Waswa’s play has marvelous choreography and mellifluous voices. He illustrates the single mother’s struggles and the way a girl child’s thwarted dreams can affect her entire life.

Clearly, it’s better to listen and help the child be true to herself. But Waswa’s script, however entertaining and titillating, leaves gaps we’d wish to see filled with clarity.

 

 

 

 

SITATI PLAY RAISES QUERIES RE; RULE OF LAW

 SITATI PLAY RAISES QUERIES REGARDING RULE OF LAW

By Margaretta wa Gacheru

Having seen most of the plays by Walter Sitati (who is currently out of the country studying theatre arts down South), I feel he is one of Kenya’s finest playwrights.

I’m not alone in this assessment. His latest play was recently shortlisted in a global theatre competition. Out of hundreds of scripts submitted to the Cimientos Play Development Project, Sitati’s was one of ten that recently had a public reading in New York that I would have loved to see.

In the meantime, Igiza Players produced Sitati’s play, ‘All I ever wanted’ last weekend at Kenya Cultural Centre. Igiza did a fine job under the direction of Arnold Wreiner. But I still find this play one of the most cryptic and curious of all of Sitati’s plays.

Set within the Court, home, and judicial chambers of Judge Frank Harvey (Jeff Obonyo), the play opens in his courtroom. He appears to be a proud, autocratic, and no-nonsense man who will have three cases to rule on. That is not including the more personal cases he’ll have to decide in relation to his family and his love life. 

The courtroom cases are quirky but compelling. The first is a murder charge. The victim was a sick woman on a life-support system that got unplugged by her daughter whose priority was charging her cell phone. The unplugging led to her mother’s demise. So, could the daughter be held responsible for her mother’s death?

The girl’s lawyer was asking for leniency since she is ‘addicted’ to her phone. It all sounds ridiculous, except that someone died. It’s also true that young people are often obsessed with their phones. Indeed, even Judge Frank’s son Nicholas is infatuated with his phone.

But one doesn’t normally associate the cell phone with murder. The advocate arguing most forcefully for the girl being held accountable for murder is one of the Judge’s former girlfriends who still has the hots for him.

Laura (Milkah Wangui) is out to revive that relationship. Meanwhile, the Judge is making a lame attempt to rectify his relationship with his wife who’s embittered by his infidelity but hopeful he will help her keep their daughter in school.

There are lots of sub-plots interwoven into Sitati’s script. Corruption is the most insidious one. Frank’s wife is the first to draw attention to the corrupting role of infidelity. But it’s the second case that comes to Judge Frank’s court that draws the most glaring attention to a ‘deep state’ sort of influence on the courts and society at large.

The case itself is against Citizen Y (Venessa Gichio) who refuses to pay her taxes. She stands on an ethical position: the State misuses taxpayers’ funds and doesn’t provide public services in the process.

Judge Frank admires Citizen Y for her principled position. But he plans to jail her for three years anyway. Nonetheless, once he is visited by an undercover agent who wants the verdict to be harsher, Frank decides to let her off with a rap on her knuckles.

Finally, Judge Frank’s third case is just as surreal as the first one. A young man is suing his former girlfriend for broken promises and a broken heart. The case is nearly dismissed since it sounds crazy. But the man’s lawyer is Laura, who has an affinity for such feelings since Frank had once promised to marry her. That got broken after Frank was appointed a judge. Apparently, he realized it wasn’t wise to have girlfriends on the side since it was bad for judicial business.

As it turned out, Laura got her client’s rival on the witness stand. He turns out to be Nicholas, Judge Frank’s son, the one who’s just as obsessed with his phone as the girl who pulled the plug on her mom’s life support.

Surprisingly, the courtroom becomes the scene where the girlfriend changes her mind and goes back to Laura’s client, winning her this round. She tries to follow it up with a quick trip to Frank’s chamber so she can win him back as well. But he's still trying to make things right with his wife. It doesn’t work.

But then, the play has a peculiar ending. Frank finally succumbs to Laura’s advances. We are left with nobody redeemed, except maybe the mom and the daughter who have reconciled.

Otherwise, ‘All I ever wanted’ is aspirational, a hope that maybe one day, rule of law will prevail in Kenya. But not yet.

 

RANI THE DAZZLING DRUM QUEEN

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted June 15, 2022)

How many girls do you know can be a ballerina one night, dancing tall on her toes at the Kenya National theatre and two days later behave like a funky punk girl drummer giving an awesome solo performance at an elegant Golden Palms restaurant?

“This is my first sort of professional performance on drums,” Rani Shah tells BDLife just moments before she goes to sit behind her man-sized drum kit.

“I’ve performed a lot in school, but this is the first time that I’ve been invited to drum professionally in a public place,” she says as she explains she has been at Golden Palms since morning that day, both setting up her drums and rehearsing with the DJ who selected half a dozen Bollywood tunes he knew his audience would like and she picked the other six top-ten hits.

Normally, Rani says she rehearses several hours every day and also has drum lessons via Zoom with her Cameroonian teacher three times a week, but since she was invited to perform, she’s added rehearsal hours just to ensure her performance is rhythmically perfect.

And perfect it was! She changed her style depending on which kind of music the DJ played. But overall, there wasn’t one moment when Rani missed the beat or fell off the rhythm. Nonetheless, one could see she was adding special stylistic effects to every song. And you could also see that she enjoyed each tune, and never even worked up a sweat despite the speed, force, and dynamism that she injected, using not just her arms, legs, and feet, but also her head, heart, and soul.

 

Asked if she normally does special exercises to prepare for the sort of rigorous performing that we saw last Tuesday night, Rani says it isn’t necessary since she gets the exercise during her lengthy rehearsals and in her classes as well.

Yet when you look at this tall, lanky, and lean little girl who is just 15, you can’t see one bulging muscle on her bones. You have to wonder where she gets all that energy!

“It’s all in the technique,” Rani says. “You have to learn the right technique. Then you don’t need big muscles.” Her words are confirmed in her performance where she made explosive sounds when she wanted, at the same time alternating with cooler sounds when the song required them.

The owners of the Golden Palms, Neera and Khilan Shah, are clearly impressed with the first female drummer they have had perform on their premises. “We often have drummers perform with our DJ, so when we heard about Rani, we decided to invite her tonight,” Neera tells BD Life. The crowd that is coming in this evening is having a pre-wedding party and dinner-dance so everyone is dressed in elegant saris and colorful tunics. Rani’s performance provides a welcoming warmth to the guests. Yet not everyone is aware this girl performs for more than an hour and a half nonstop!

“Rani loves her drumming,” says her mother, Leena Shah. “She has been learning to make music and to dance from the time she was age three,” adds this visual artist who admits creativity runs in the blood of her family.

“We were living in South Africa when Rani was born, and I had been told that it was best not to send children to school until there were seven. So I chose to enroll her in music and dance classes when she was three,” Leena says.

Rani’s drum teacher also taught her play keyboard, which meant she taught Rani to read music even before the little girl could read a book.

                    Rani learned Indian dancing as well as ballet, but she's all for ballet and drums. At Golden Palms

“I also took her to ballet around the same time,” Rani’s artist mother adds. “She hasn’t stopped studying either dance or drums ever since!”

This multi-talented girl-child has also been painting side by side her painterly mom for as long as she can recall. And whenever her school had theatre productions, Rani was also on stage. But the most consistent art forms that give her the greatest joy are her drums and her dance.

It doesn’t hurt that both her parents are gung ho for Rani’s artistic pursuits. Her dad, Raj Shah, tells BD Life that her artistic activities have only enhanced her academic studies it seems.

“The same sort of precision we see in her drums and her dance, we also see in her academics, thankfully,” says Raj who brought Rani’s full drum kit of five drums and two sets of cymbals to Golden Palms early in the day. 

He's the epitome of a loving father who’s proud of his child.

 

 

 

 

KAREN ART FAIR WITH MUKABI, KIOKO & GERALDINE

POP UP KAREN AIR FAIR FEATURES ART INDOOR & OUTDOORS

                                                                                Geraldine's post cave art

By Margaretta wa Gacheru

What do Kioko Mwitiki, Patrick Mukabi, and Geraldine Robarts have in common?

A whole lot, as it turns out. All three are artists, one a sculptor, the other two painters.

All three are also teachers and mentors who are always entertaining apprentices or artists attached from art schools who want more exposure to how the real art world works on the ground.

And all three shared the same vast indoor-outdoor exhibition space last weekend at the Karen home of Geraldine. Plus, the atmosphere was enriched by the gentle musical sounds of the singer, nyatiti-player Judith Bwire and her band.

                                           Patrick Mukbi's art, paintings on printed canvas at Karen Art Fair

“I taught Kioko at Kenyatta University many years ago,” recalls Geraldine. “And Patrick has been my friend for ever so long,” she adds, alluding to the fact that both artists picked up on her plan to have a show where all three could both exhibit and teach at the same time.

Happy to have her house and grounds opened up for the exhibition, Geraldine hoped her garden would be seen as part of the exhibitio

              Kioko Mwitiki's scrap-metal Guards at Karen Art Fair, June 12, 2022

“My second love after painting is gardening,” says the art lecturer who came to Kenya to teach at KU in the Seventies after working at Makerere for several years. “Every shrub you see here was planted with these hands,” she tells BDLife as we gaze out from her gazebo into an abundantly green yard filled with scrap-metal sculptures made by Kioko.

“Patrick has all his paintings in Geraldine’s second gallery [which is down towards the Kibo Lane entrance],” adds Mike Fairhead, Geraldine’s spouse and main Mr Fix-it for everything that needs mending around the house and grounds. That is where Patrick spends a big portion of the weekend, teaching children to paint and draw using charcoal and oil pastels.

“I brought a lot of my newest works,” Patrick tells BDLife as he shows me how he is still painting his market mamas selling fruits and vegetables. Only now he’s chosen to select various kitenge and kikoi to fix atop his stretched canvas frames, and then sketch and paint them using those patterns as artistic background.

                                                                            Patrick Mukabi's Mama Mboga

“I’ve also found local companies like Rivertex are printing [floral and animal skin] patterns on canvas that I’m stretching and painting,” Patrick adds. The artistic effects of his new initiatives are beautiful since the prints remain as backdrops but they enhance his use of color, shape, and style.

Meanwhile, Kioko admits he couldn’t easily do training of young sculptors during the weekend since his work requires lots of space. “That’s also why I had to move out of town to Magadi where I have a big workshop and nobody complains about the noise that we make, banging and welding our steel scraps,” Kioko tells BDLife.

He also needs lots of space in light of the types of commissions he continues to receive. “We recently were asked to create a herd of [life-size] elephants to be part of East African Breweries’ Seventieth anniversary of Tusker Lager,” Kioko says, recalling that he was given two-weeks-notice to start and complete the job. It required his working night and day with 15 of his most advanced apprentices. Together they created five scrap-metal elephants which were 13 feet tall. “After that, EABL donated the five to the Kenya Wildlife Service for their permanent collection,” Kioko says.

                                                                                    Geraldine's Tree of Life

Adding that he also runs day-long workshops which are increasingly attended by young women, Kioko says the trend of women in their twenties learning to weld is something he’s happy to see. “

Meanwhile, Geraldine plays hostess to a stream of visitors whom she welcomes into both her gallery and her home. “Until I built the gallery, my living room was my ‘gallery’,” she explains. One of her latest pieces is a glowing red, orange, gold, and ochre colored baobab that hangs in the living room above one of her large Chinese chests. Others, in similar hues, are in the first gallery that she built three years ago.

Seated with the artist in that gallery, Geraldine says, “I’m grateful to the other gallerists who chose not to exhibit my work. They spurred me on to build a gallery of my own where I can invite other artists to exhibit here as well.”

But having two galleries and two art studios (one where she works on her extra-large canvases) still isn’t sufficient to reveal all the artwork that Geraldine has conceived in the last two years alone. That’s because she paints at the same rate as other people breathe. Painting is her passion; it’s also her life.

 

 

 

 

VETERAN ARTISTS: RAHAB, EUNICE AND MAGGIE AT BANANA HILL

                             Rahab Njambi Shine at Banana Hill Art Gallery with Eunice Wadu and Maggie Otieno

MORE WOMEN ARTISTS COMING OUT FROM THE SHADOWS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted June 13, 2022)

2022 is shaping up to be the year of Kenyan women artists. For so long, we wondered where they were, since we knew they were there somewhere. And finally, this year, they have come forth to reveal some of their finest works.

First came the troika of Yony Waite, Tabitha wa Thuku, and Theresa Musoke at Circle Art Gallery.

Then came Caroline Mbirua, Esther Mukuhi, and Nayia Sitonik at the Karen Blixen Museum, followed by a show of the same trio at Banana Hill Art Gallery.

And now, coincidentally with the 30^th anniversary celebration of Banana Hill Gallery is the show entitled “Women’s Touch’ with another triad of brilliant pioneering Kenyan women artists, Rahab Shine, Eunice Wadu, and Maggie Otieno.

All three have been working in their respective fields for years. But like so many talented women, they haven’t aggressive sought the limelight. Instead, Eunice has been teaching art to children in Naivasha with her illustrious hubby, Sane Wadu. Rahab has been managing Banana Hill Gallery with hers, the equally important artist-gallerist Shine Tani. And Maggie has been based in Langata, sculpting mainly in metals and wood, and occasionally creating massive murals in various railway stations.

It was during the launch of Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute that Rahab and Eunice got to chatting about the need for an all-women’s exhibition.

“We talked about how women are the carriers of culture, yet our role seems to be forgotten,” Rahab told BDLife shortly after the exhibition opened. “As of now, we’re committed to claiming our rightful place side by side the men. We won’t be forgotten anymore,” she added.

Agreeing to work together for such a women’s show, the two went back to their home studios and shifted into high gear preparing for their exhibition.

Shortly thereafter, Maggie Otieno arrived at Banana Hill Gallery with the Dream Kona Women’s Rika Art Project, and Rahab suggested she join the exhibition since she’s a veteran female sculptor.

It was serendipity that got the trio together. But it’s currently working beautifully on the ground at Banana Hill where there’s room enough for Rahab’s luscious landscapes, Eunice’s paintings and prints, and Maggie’s scrap-metal sculptures.

At first glance, one might think that Rahab’s paintings are repetitive since she frequently sticks with similar hues, with pastel blues matching Kenyan skies, pearl white for her fluffy white clouds, ochre brown matching the color of volcanic soil, and touches of yellow like the tips of acacia trees around Naivasha (renamed ‘Delamere’ in her art).

                                                               Maggie Otieno's scrap-metal sculpture

But if you take a second look, you will see that each painting is distinctive, deliberately expressive of Rahab’s photographic memory of myriad villages that have grown up between Banana Hill and Shine’s home village of Kiptanguanyi in Nakuru.

But even more interesting than the subtle differences between Rahab’s landscapes is first, the way she blends those colors into impressionistic fantasy lands filled with hills, valleys, and homesteads that leave you wondering what goes on inside them.

Eunice, like Rahab, has grown up around male painters from whom she’s gained inspiration to develop her own artistic skills. For Rahab, her evolution has been as an impressionistic landscape painter. For Eunice, it’s her woodcut prints that stand out in ‘Women’s Touch’. For whether her prints are of birds, beggars, or babies with doting mothers, each one clearly reveals her development as a printmaker having real appeal.

And as for Maggie, her career as a sculptor took off in the early 2000s after coming under the influence of Elijah Ogira, one of Kenya’s finest sculptors. Initially, she worked in wood. But where she’s been a pioneering female is in her work welding metal scraps and shaping them into remarkable forms of metallic art.

One of her most stunning welded works in ‘Women’s Touch’ is entitled ‘Comfort’.

       

                                                                                       Rahab Shine's village 

“I was asked by a friend to create a piece that might console someone who had lost a loved one, so I created ‘Comfort’,” Maggie told BDLife, referring to a sculpture that reminds me somewhat of sculptures by the renowned Romanian modernist sculptor, Constantin Brancusi. His name might also come to mind if one sees the eight tall, slender, and shapely metallic totems that Maggie made specially after winning a commission to create sculptures for Garden City Mall’s front lawn. They are all uniquely her own, yet they echo the spirit of that great master sculptor.

The works of Maggie, Rahab, and Eunice are playing an essential role in the Gallery’s 30^th anniversary celebrations which began last weekend and runs through to the end of June.

HEARTSTRINGS TAKES A STAND FOR WOMEN

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted June 5, 2022)

With friends like his, Richard Ambogo didn’t need enemies.

That could well be one of the first meaningful messages one came away with after watching Heartstrings’ one might have learned from the show is to never to take a Heartstrings’ title as having any relevance to the show itself. If anything, a mother was the last thing Richard wanted to see in his own experience. The only mother we ever see in the play is his first wife, Vanessa (Andale Machrine), from whom he ran away once the going got rough. And one of the reasons he and his one-time fiancée (Adeyline Wairimu) had a falling out three years back was because he didn’t want to make her a mother, didn’t want to make babies at the time.

But now, things have changed for Richard (Paul Ogola). Now he is up for a major promotion and one of the deciding points is seeing that the winning candidate has a happy family life. Yet that is exactly what Richard doesn’t have.

Initially, he had two weeks to figure that one out; but the boss had come to town and told Richard’s workmates that he had pushed the process up to the following Monday.

That threw everyone close to Richard into a panic mode, especially Tim Drissi and Fischer Maina who expected to get preferential treatment once Richard took over the reins of power. They planned to start up several lucrative (and shady) business deals on the side that they trusted Richard would turn a blind eye to.

But once they started interfering in Richard’s affairs, things got uncomfortable and even ugly. Tim had called the first wife, Vanessa (Machrine) and told her she needed to come quick since Richard’s was a case of life or death.

Richard, who also really wanted that promotion, got roped into Tim’s treachery. When Vanessa shows up at his house, he implores her to come back home. ‘No way’, is her clear-cut message to him. This man had walked on her and their two kids eleven years back, and he’d never before tried to make amends. So, there was no way she was going to forget the struggles she as a now single mother had gone through following his precipitous flight.

Then there was Fischer who calls the almost-second-wife, Jacinta (Adeyline Nimo) who he had left some three years back after refusing her plea to help her make a baby. For him, another child was not economically feasible, but Jacinta had taken his rejection personally. What made it worse was that he'd completed part of the traditional wedding ceremony before he had split, thus making it impossible for her to get involved with another man until Richard returned to reverse his vow to wed her traditionally.

Meanwhile, the one woman who had been in Richard’s life through the thick and thin of his affairs was Siketa (Bernice N), his house help. She had been good friends with both women when they had been in Richard’s life. Playing the part of a sort of ditsy cleaning lady, Siketa looks like she could be a de facto ‘wife’ for a day, but Richard doesn’t let on until she arrives in the last scene.

Unbeknownst to Richard, both buddies have brought Richard’s ex’s to stand with him when and if he gets called the winner during the announcement ceremony. One can foresee a calamity in the making, but it’s not the one that ensues right before this comedy-drama ends.

One assumes that unless Tim and Fischer make peace before the promotion is announced, there will be a catastrophe as both ex-wives speak up on Richard’s behalf. Thereafter, he would be known as a philanderer or a polygamist or both. Certainly, the company could change its mind and give the job to the other guy, Josephat, who honestly has a happy family (as we are led to believe).

But Richard is slick enough to foresee the problem before it takes place. He is able to defuse it before either ‘ex’ has a chance to speak up. He accepts the winning promotion and then calls upon his wife aka his house help Seketa, who is eloquent in response to the company search for a man of integrity.

The only problem is she states emphatically that ‘Such a man is not Richard Ombogo!’

The end! Fini!

As it turns out, Seketa, in her seeming simplicity, is a truth-teller and more of a feminist than a loyal employee. She makes a moral claim to counter the anticipated corruption and defies everyone's expectation.

 

 

 

UWEZA, FINDING THE 10 YEAR OLD GALLERY IN KIBERA

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (composed June 10, 2022)

Tucked away deep inside Nairobi’s so-called ‘biggest slum in Africa’, Kibera, one may have the good fortune to find the Uweza Gallery.

Before you can get there, though, you need to pass through two sets of guarded gates. Only then will you meet Frank Okoth and Wesley Osoro, two of the young artists and part-time art teachers who exhibit their paintings at Uweza and have been doing so for several years.

Yes, years. Uweza Gallery is not new. It was launched in 2012 by an American lady called Jen Sapitro who first established the Uweza Foundation in 2011, says Mr Okoth. Ms. Sapitro apparently had a large vision. She didn’t just set up an art project, which is what the gallery is part of. She also started boys and girls’ football (aka soccer) teams, and something called a ‘Bright Future for Young Mothers’ project. And she also set up an administrative structure wherein she is CEO and has a secretary and treasurer, although she doesn’t stay in Kenya and only comes here intermittently.

As I frankly had never heard of Uweza Gallery before a friend recommend we go see it. He had seen it advertised in some Ex-pat magazine, so I was curious. When we finally reached the Gallery, we had to get through yet another metal gate, only to find we were entering a house made over into a gallery, rather like the first house that the Brush tu Artists Collective rented in Buru Buru Phase 1. The difference is that Uweza’s hse is quite a bit smaller than Brush tu, and its front yard has been transformed into an open-air artists’ studio.

of

At Uweza, there were two rooms downstairs where artworks filled every inch of wall space, including four panels erected as a tall rectangle in the centre of the room for exhibiting more artworks stacked practically one on top of the other.

The second room was just the same, and so was the upstairs. Making the most economical use of the limited space that they had, it was Frank Okoth who was on duty that day to answer our questions and show us around the Gallery.

Admitting that most of the art displayed was by the students who came for the free Saturday classes taught every weekend at Uweza. Explaining that he taught with Wesley Osoro, who arrived at the gallery right after us, both men were able to show us their art at our asking.

“Ours is the largest art gallery in all of Kibera,” Osoro tells BDLife proudly. We noted we only knew of one other gallery in Kibera, Maasai Mbili. But Osoro wouldn’t retract his comment. “They are not as active as they used to be,” he says, possibly not knowing that Maasai Mbili artists are often invited out of the country to exhibit for extended periods of time.

In any case, Osoro has a point, although it is amazing that one hasn’t heard of Boniface Macharia, Brian Gwoko, Don Odhiambo, Douglas Maina, Eugene Oduor, Frank Osoro, or even himself before. Most of them are young artists who have been working within the Uweza system for years.

For instance, Osoro was still in primary school when the Gallery got off the ground. He started taking those Saturday classes where Ms. Sapitro had provided the initial funds enabling the Saturday students to work with free art materials. These included canvas, acrylic paints, oil pastels, and brushes.

“Through the sale of my paintings, I was able to pay my school fees through primary and secondary,” Osoro says. Now in his last year at the Catholic University where he studies political science, he adds that he’s still covering his university fees through the sale of his art.

The Foundation’s business model works so that when an artwork is sold, the artist gets 60 percent of the sale, and the gallery get 40 percent. “That 40 percent goes towards paying the rent and covering the cost of art materials,” says Frank who adds the gallery is virtually self-sustaining. It also helps that the cost of the artworks is relatively inexpensive as compared to other upmarket galleries that feature widely known professional artists.

There are many paintings in the gallery that look like children’s art. But my friend didn’t mind buying a painting he liked which was by a 17-year-old named Eugene Oduor. He was also happy to buy a small surrealist portrait of a little girl by Boniface Macharia for Sh6,000.