NGARTIA TRANFORMS SPOKEN WORD POETRY INTO A ROUSING MUSICAL

BY Margaretta wa Gacheru

Outspoken as ever, Ngartia Kimathi, the award-winning spoken word poet and storyteller supreme is back.

The co-founder of Too Early for Birds (with Abubakar Majid) has been gone for many months after making a huge impact on the spoken-word and storytelling scene from the moment ‘Too Early’ appeared in 2017. He and his group were right on time (not too early!), being something fresh and new, inspired and appealing to a younger generation of Kenyan artists.

But after several well-received performances, there has been an extended hiatus which we heard from the poet himself is being broken in August when Too Early for Birds will stage their own come-back production.

But last Sunday, (April 21^st), the stage at Braeburn Theatre Gitanga belonged totally to Ngartia, surrounded by a dazzling array of other young artists and professional performers, all directed by Nyokabi Macharia.

Blending spoken-word poetry with contemporary dance, live music, and excellent lighting and sound, it was definitely Ngartia who commanded the centre stage with his vision, verses, and vibrant testimony on the struggles, pains, and possibilities of living in Nairobi and the country right now.

There is a central love story that will serve as a unifying thread that gives the various poetic vignettes a feeling of cohesion and a sense of a beginning and end.

In the beginning, Ngartia opens explosively with a powerful performance on the Word. He covers the gamut of what the word provides; where it is to be found, which is essentially everywhere; who are the word-smiths and why they are all so special.

With this sort of blitz of a word-statement of purpose, we could see Ngartia hadn’t forgotten how to rouse his audience to new appreciation of whatever it was that he was appreciating.

Previously, he had been passionate about Kenyan history and gave us stories like Tom Mboya, but now he is onto new terrain. Moving on with the times was one of the themes, key messages and must does that he shared with his audiences.

But then, as he did this, he also shifted gears and gave a profoundly personal poem on the destructive methods of fear. He effectively illustrated just how lethal it can be, since it can paralyze one’s forward motion in life, kill one’s sense of purpose, and make them feel like they are nobody and nothing, so why not end it all. Fear is mesmeric, and self-destructive.

But Ngartia also shared the hopeful possibility of conquering fear once you realize you have that power within you to resist it, just as he did.

And again, his presentation was eye-opening, and awesome in revealing just how deeply deceitful and dangerous fear can be, even as it was embodied in the form of a woman (Chemutai Sage).               

But getting rid of fear is not complete merely by destroying it in one’s experience once. It has to be re-resisted daily, since fear is very versatile and can take on new styles and shapes all the time. Plus, it can be grabbing others who haven’t heard or heeded his call to be vigilant and to trust one’s self.

It’s with these insights in mind that he arrives in Nairobi where his next spoken-word scenario is on the dangers of living in the city. They are not quite the same as those addressed in a film like Nairobi Half-Life (which will be staged as a musical by Nairobi Performing Arts Studio later this year) where Nairobbery was more about impacting the car-conscious middle class.

What’s happening now is that petty thieves, government officials, conmen, con-women and even conning kids are snatching everything from ordinary people by all methods and means. Their targets are primarily those who walk, rather than ride since they don’t have the means to take either matatus, bodas or private cars.

Then, he gives an impassioned performance on conmen and how they often have a devastating impact on people’s lives.

This is when he spots Empress Msupa (Chemutai Sage) looking forlorn and lost. He goes straight into his charm mode, refusing to be pushed away, especially when he hears her bag had been grabbed. He manages to break through her defenses and they fall in love. Bu then their story fades out as Ngartia has many more stories to share before theirs run full circle.

By the end of the show, Ngartia has convinced us the man isn’t just a masterful storyteller and powerful poet; he’s a wise man who’s got prophetic powers to navigate life in Nairobi and life beyond.

 

 

 

BONI DELIVERS A MESSAGE OF ARTISTIC FREEDOM

 

When Boniface Maina made his move out of Nairobi, back home to Nanyuki, in 2017, nobody knew how long he would be gone.

Having been a co-founder of Brush tu Artists Collective with David Thuku and Michael Musyoka, he would always be a Brush tu artist, no matter where he was based; that was certain. But other than that, no one could tell when he’d be back or what direction his art would take.

Despite being very much a member of the Brush tu family, he had always had his own singular style of operating. As he put it in Susan Githuku’s book, Visual Voices, he had always been experimental in his approach to his art. He was always open to reinventing himself stylistically. So, when we heard he was having his first solo exhibition in a while at Red Hill Gallery in early April, BD Life was keen to be there on time.

We had been to numerous exhibitions featuring Boni’s art in the past. He had one solo exhibition at the now defunct Art Space in Chiromo run by Wambui Collemore, and countless group shows, like ones he had at the Russian Embassy, another in Lamu at the Peponi Hotel, and many others at Brush tu, first when it initially opened in Buru Buru Phase one and just the trio were exhibiting, and another when the group moved literally across the street and into a house so they could accommodate more up-and-coming artists who wanted to work closely with the troika of Boni, Thuku and Musyoka[ms1] .

The collective was growing so fast that they had to tear down a wall so as to enlarge the space and accommodate still more artists. It was a timely move since a donor had stepped in to enable Brush tu to have art residencies that proved to attract a Pan African set of artists to come and work for several months at Brush tu.

It's also when the collective started having monthly Open Houses, where Boni’s art featured alongside a whole new generation of Kenyan painters, sculptors, photographers, and printmakers. It was also when we finally saw women joining the collective, and bringing new perspectives to the group. At every show one would find Boni taking different approaches to his work.

Most recently, before he went home for many months, Boni introduced us to a new character in his art. He was quite unlike the Smokey character who has never quite revealed himself through his maker, Paul Onditi. But then, it seemed he was meant to walk us through his encounters with dystopic worlds to witness them first hand with Smokey.

Boni’s nameless fellow seemed to have a more developed sense of personality and identity.  His sole reason for joining Boni’s artistic ‘ecosystem’ seems to be for expressing Boni’s sense of freedom: freedom to relax, to watch a sunset, or to leap into new realms of the unknown. And while his man seems to be apolitical, blissful despite the dystopic blight many have to face every day, Boni has chosen to peel off the skin of his character, so that his identity could transcend the problems of race, ethnicity, and even age. His man is clothed only in his muscular form.

We expected to find him at Red Hill when Bon’s show opened. He was there and still a representative of the artist’s free spirit. But the show, entitled ‘Delicate Densities’ seemed to be more about Boni’s experimentations with multimedia.

He had always loved drawing and that is what inspired him to come to Nairobi to attend first, the YMCA National Training Centre followed by another degree in painting and drawing from BIFA, the Buru Buru Institute of Fine Art.

But now, in this exhibition, Boni outdoes himself, infusing moods and moments into a whole range of materials. He works with everything from bleach and ink on canvas and special watercolor paper. He also works with various paints and brushes on wooden planks on which he also etches. He even takes up carpentry to design and assemble some of his most ambitious works which are more like sculptures than three dimensional paintings. And while the exhibition also includes a number of works from earlier periods of his artistic evolution, they also reveal just how far Boni has come since he first arrived in Nairobi in the early days of the new millennium. 

Ultimately, it’s his ongoing exercise of experimentation and creative curiosity that fuel our own appreciation of Boniface Maina.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

 

---

 [ms1]

EXPERIMENTAL ARTIST BONI MAINA AT RED HILL GALLERY

 by Margaretta

When Boniface Maina made his move out of Nairobi, back home to Nanyuki, in 2017 nobody knew how long he would be gone.

Having been a co-founder of Brush tu Artists Collective with David Thuku and Michael Musyoka, he would always be a Brush tu artist, no matter where he was based; that was certain. But other than that, no one could tell when he’d be back or what direction his art would take.

Despite being very much a member of the Brush tu family, he had always had his own singular style of operating. As he put it in Susan Githuku’s book, Visual Voices, he had always been experimental in his approach to his art. He was always open to reinventing himself stylistically. So, when we heard he was having his first solo exhibition in a while at Red Hill Gallery in early April, BD Life was keen to be there on time.

We had been to numerous exhibitions featuring Boni’s art in the past. He had one solo exhibition at the now defunct Art Space in Chiromo run by Wambui Collemore, and countless group shows, like ones he had at the Russian Embassy, another in Lamu at the Peponi Hotel, and many others at Brush tu, first when it initially opened in Buru Buru Phase one and just the trio were exhibiting, and another when the group moved literally across the street and into a house so they could accommodate more up-and-coming artists who wanted to work closely with the troika of Boni, Thuku and Musyoka[ms1] .

The collective was growing so fast that they had to tear down a wall so as to enlarge the space and accommodate still more artists. It was a timely move since a donor had stepped in to enable Brush tu to have art residencies that proved to attract a Pan African set of artists to come and work for several months at Brush tu.

This is also when the collective started having monthly Open Houses where Boni’s art was featured along with a whole new generation of painters and sculptors appearing, some Kenyan, others international. This was also when we finally see women like Sebawali Sio and Bushkimani Moira joining the collective, and bringing new perspectives to the group. At every show one would find Boni taking on different approaches.

Most recently, before he went home for many months, Boni introduced us to a new character in his art. He was quite unlike the Smokey character who has never quite revealed himself through his maker, Paul Onditi. But then, it seemed he was meant to walk us through his encounters with dystopic worlds to witness them first hand with Smokey.

Boni’s nameless fellow seemed to have a more developed sense of personality and identity.  His sole reason for joining Boni’s artistic ‘ecosystem’ seems to be for expressing Boni’s sense of freedom: freedom to relax, to watch a sunset, or to leap into new realms of the unknown. And while his man seems to be apolitical, blissful despite the dystopic blight many have to face every day, Boni has chosen to peel off the skin of our character, so that his identity transcends the problems of race, ethnicity, and even age. His man is clothed in his muscular form.

We expected to find him at Red Hill when Bon’s show opened. He was there and still a representative of the artist’s free spirit. But the show, entitled ‘Delicate Densities’ seemed to be more about Boni’s experimentations with multimedia.

He had always loved drawing and that is what inspired him to come to Nairobi to attend first, the YMCA National Training Centre followed by another degree in painting and drawing from BIFA, the Buru Buru Institute of Fine Art. But now, in this show, Boni outdoes himself, infusing moods and moments into a whole range of materials. He works with everything from bleach and ink on canvas and special watercolor paper. He also works with paints and brushes on wooden planks on which he also etches. He even takes up carpentry to design and assemble some of his most ambitious works which are more like sculptures than three dimensional paintings. And while the exhibition also includes a number of works from earlier periods of his artistic evolution, they also reveal just how far Boni has come since he first arrived in Nairobi in the early days of the new millennium. 

Ultimately, it’s the pleasure the artist finds in experimenting in the arts has been a constant that has led to our ongoing appreciation of Boniface Maina.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

---

 [ms1]

NGARTIA TRANSFORMS SPOKEN WORD POETRY INTO ROUSING MUSICAL THEATRE

BY Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 20.4.24)

Outspoken as ever, Ngartia Kimathi, the award-winning spoken word poet and storyteller supreme is back.

The co-founder of Too Early for Birds (with Abubakar Majid) has been gone for many months after making a huge impact on the spoken-word and storytelling scene from the moment ‘Too Early’ appeared in 2017. He and his group were right on time (not too early!), being something fresh and new, inspired and appealing to a younger generation of Kenyan artists.

But after several well-received performances, there has been an extended hiatus which we heard from the poet himself is being broken in August when Too Early for Birds will stage their own come-back production.

But last Sunday, (April 21^st), the stage at Braeburn Theatre Gitanga belonged totally to Ngartia, surrounded by a dazzling array of other young artists and professional performers, all directed by Nyokabi Macharia.

Blending spoken-word poetry with contemporary dance, live music, and excellent lighting and sound, it was definitely Ngartia who commanded the centre stage with his vision, verses, and vibrant testimony on the struggles, pains, and possibilities of living in Nairobi and the country right now.

There is a central love story that will serve as a unifying thread that gives the various poetic vignettes a feeling of cohesion and a sense of a beginning and end.

In the beginning, Ngartia opens explosively with a powerful performance on the Word. He covers the gamut of what the word provides; where it is to be found, which is essentially everywhere; who are the word-smiths and why they are all so special.

With this sort of blitz of a word-statement of purpose, we could see Ngartia hadn’t forgotten how to rouse his audience to new appreciation of whatever it was that he was appreciating.

Previously, he had been passionate about Kenyan history and gave us stories like Tom Mboya, but now he is onto new terrain. Moving on with the times was one of the themes, key messages and must does that he shared with his audiences.

But then, as he did this, he also shifted gears and gave a profoundly personal poem on the destructive methods of fear. He effectively illustrated just how lethal it can be, since it can paralyze one’s forward motion in life, kill one’s sense of purpose, and make them feel like they are nobody and nothing, so why not end it all. Fear is mesmeric, and self-destructive.

But Ngartia also shared the hopeful possibility of conquering fear once you realize you have that power within you to resist it, just as he did.

And again, his presentation was eye-opening, and awesome in revealing just how deeply deceitful and dangerous fear can be, even as it was embodied in the form of a woman (Chemutai Sage).                

But getting rid of fear is not complete merely by destroying it in one’s experience once. It has to be re-resisted daily, since fear is very versatile and can take on new styles and shapes all the time. Plus, it can be grabbing others who haven’t heard or heeded his call to be vigilant and to trust one’s self.

It’s with these insights in mind that he arrives in Nairobi where his next spoken-word scenario is on the dangers of living in the city. They are not quite the same as those addressed in a film like Nairobi Half-Life (which will be staged as a musical by Nairobi Performing Arts Studio later this year) where Nairobbery was more about impacting the car-conscious middle class.

What’s happening now is that petty thieves, government officials, conmen, con-women and even conning kids are snatching everything from ordinary people by all methods and means. Their targets are primarily those who walk, rather than ride since they don’t have the means to take either matatus, bodas or private cars.

Then, he gives an impassioned performance on conmen and how they often have a devastating impact on people’s lives.

This is when he spots Empress Msupa (Chemutai Sage) looking forlorn and lost. He goes straight into his charm mode, refusing to be pushed away, especially when he hears her bag had been grabbed. He manages to break through her defences and they fall in love. Bu then their story fades out as Ngartia has many more stories to share before theirs run full circle.

By the end of the show, Ngartia has convinced us the man isn’t just a masterful storyteller and powerful poet; he’s a wise man who’s got prophetic powers to navigate life in Nairobi and life beyond.

 

SUDANESE ART AND AMNESTY INTERN'L INFO AT NOIR

bY mARGARETTA WA gACHERU (4.17.2024)

Amnesty International Kenya had been planning to commemorate (or commiserate) the first anniversary since the latest round of the civil war in Sudan had begun on April 15, 2023.

But it took a small nudge from the Sudan Democracy First Group to suggest the concept of ‘Art for Aid’ be the theme of that day. In the mind of SDFG’s executive director Omayma Gutabi, a collaboration between AIK and SDFG could provide an effective contrast between the panel of Sudanese war experts organized by Amnesty’s executive director, Irungu Houghton and Sudanese artists, all of whom had to flee Khartoum for their lives. Some had come to either Kenya or Uganda in 2023. A few as early as 1994.

Either way, the artists could provide eye-witness accounts of the terror, ‘arbitrary bombing, targeting of civilians, and gender-violence inflicted on women and girls’ that was referenced during the panel of experts on the 15^th at the Noir Art Gallery. The artists, through their art could also provide a sense of hope and beauty prophetically revealed in works like Gutabi’s painting entitled ‘Re-emergence’.

“That painting is all about a time when we will be able to re-emerge from the dark shadows of war into the light of day and peace. It’s all about hope,’ Gutabi told BD Life at the opening..

Amnesty picked up on Gutabi’s idea but reframed the title to be ‘Brushstrokes of Resilience: A Year of Reflections and Memories from Sudan’.

The aid that Gutabi hoped to raise funds for specifically was the Community Kitchen that feeds people experiencing famine in Khartoum. She noted that thousands of famine-stricken people could be fed there for just a few thousand dollars or pounds. But that required funds which she hoped could be sourced from African civilians rather than from foreign donors. But food is just one of her people’s needs.

As we heard from Kenya’s Principle Secretary in the State Department for Foreign Affairs, Dr A. Korir Sing’oei, the situation in Sudan is dire. In addition to famine, there are no medical supplies since all aid into the country is blocked, much as it is in Palestine. The incessant calls for a ceasefire are utterly ignored, again much like Palestine. And according to Amnesty, ‘The internal conflict has killed over 14000 people and displaced over 10 million people in the last year alone,” Yet media attention to Sudan’s civil war compared to theat given to the Israel- Hamas war is like two percent to 98 percent for Israel.

That is one reason Omayma Butabi is grateful for collaboration between AI, SDFG, and a crew of Sudanese artists mobilized by the Sudan Democracy First Group and NGO International Film Festival. The exhibiting artists include Adlan Bahar, El Tayet Dawelbait, Faiz Abubaker, Fatima Hassan, Hussein Haufawi, Omayma Gutabi, Sumer Deefalla, Tibian Bahari, and Yassir Ali.

For me, there are two works in the show that stand out for being most reflect the current suffering of the Sudanese people. One is the painting by Yassir Ali, the other a sculpture by Adlan Yusif who also has a solo exhibition currently in the Kibera Art District.

The painting is covered in flaming hot red acrylic with just a small head centered at the base of the piece. It’s as if the person is being showered in blood, the result of having been bombarded by drones, missiles, bullets, and whatever new models of modern warfare have been invented to diminish or even genocide total populations as is also being done in Palestine. Yassir’s work looks simple but it’s most effective in revealing the anguish of the Sudanese people.

And the sculpture by Adlan Yusif is equally powerful in conveying the horrible burden of being alive and struggling to survive during this time of war. Here again is one man, carrying a huge box that has been constructed with scrap medal. The box could symbolize all the burdens that ordinary Sudanese  are trying to cope with. It could also contain the few bits of precious property the man remains with.  Either way, it suggests the loss of what Sudan once had but has now lost, leaving the people stranded with little to show for themselves after years of needless war.

The remaining paintings are either abstract, semi-abstract or figurative. The majority of them are by Omayma who actually curated the show and reached out to Amnesty International Kenya as a means of getting out the Sudanese story to a wider audience and also to introduce a new audience to Sudanese art.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NAIROBI’S NEW THEATRE PREMIERES WITH A MURDER MYSTERY

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (7.23.2023)

They may 📿 the youngest performing arts company to join Nairobi’s burgeoning theatre scene.

Dancing Fingers staged theirs premiere performance last Friday night at the Professional Centre, the home where the troupe’s founder-playwright and producer Alby Ng’ung’a got his first taste of theatre in the presence of one James Falkland. He never became a big-name actor, like Ian Mbugua or John Sibi Okumu.

“But I loved watching the way James brought theatre to life, and I took him as a role model that I hoped to one day emulate,” Ngunga told BD Life on the opening night of The Broken, a script that he wrote for this occasion.

It's a murder mystery, layered with several sub-themes, including sex trafficking and the exploitation of women, infidelity, and mental illness.

The story begins and ends with women weepers, which is always a problem for me when the tears carry on too long. It’s especially annoying when it takes that much longer to find out what all the angst is about. Gradually we find out that several murders have been committed and the police have been investigating and even interrogating suspects using torturous tactics that start off the screaming. And at this early juncture, we cannot really tell whether the torturers are cops or criminals or one in the same thing.

Then the scene shifts and the weeper replaces the screamer. We find that she has grounds for being upset. Clemintine had been a university student but her professor had recommended that she join Madam Sabina in her brothel which she does, although we don’t know if she went their by choice or if her ‘prof’ Dr David had powers of persuasion that are unfathomable. Either way, Clemintine may have been raped in the night possibly on her way to work. In her distress she calls her professor, but he has no mercy and tells her to bug off. She then returns to the brothel but Sabina also refused to even allow her back into a place that at one time was her home. So she’s stranded, and the next thing we know she goes missing.

Cut to more weeping, this time it’s her mom who intuits that her daughter is in trouble and yet she can’t reach Clemintine by phone. Meanwhile, her husband, Clem’s dad is out messing around with other women. But by the time he gets home, his wife is near to hysteria, having been unable to make phone contact with her only child. It takes them quite a while but they finally decide to head to town to look for the good professor David. He’s the one who recommend Clemintine come to his university. And unbeknown to everyone except Sabina, he’s the one at the heart of a sex trafficking scheme, finding vulnerable university students and getting them to go work for Sabina. Then who knows what happens to them.

David’s wife, Clara is a police mortician who works closely with Dr Msoo, the man who has serious mental issues such as schizophrenia, and a kind of mental mania that has led to his grabbing girls like Clementine and keeping them secretly for his personal use. Otherwise, he is having an affair with Clara, something that David discovers by chance, and feels deeply wounded and betrayed by it.

In any case, the police chief inspector is hot on the trail of the criminal who’s been killing young women. He visits Madam Sabina who he believes might have some connection with the killer. But not even she can imagine how any man she knows is a serial killer. He also meets with Mama and Baba Clemintine and eventually gets to the police mortuary where Clara has an office. The police Inspector heads to Dr Msoo’s home. He arrives after we have discovered Clemintine is not dead, but locked away in the doctor’s basement. The extent to which Msoo’s schizophrenia has rendered him mad as a hatter. Once he hears a knock on his door, he rushes to hid Clemi back in the basement. But the Inspector isn’t fooled by Msoo’s lucid moments. What we know is that the doctor hallucinates. That’s how we understand the dead girl on the dissection table who rises from the dead and haunts Dr Msoo who is freaked out by what he imagines to be true. The corpse seems to be telling him he will rot in Hell. It’s shortly thereafter that the Inspector arrives and arrests Msoo. Hell could be a maximum security prison for him if a jury finds him guilty of rape, murder, and kidnapping Clemintine and others.

Playwright Nganga was brave to premiere with such a complicated plot, which worked relatively well. But it required better direction since one felt the cast was flailing a bit and needed clarity as to their character development. But overall, Dancing Fingers made a good effort and looks prepared to improve as we all aim to do.                            

 

LOOSE ENDS Draft

 Mavin kibocho was smart to entitle the play that he wrote, produced and staged last Saturday at kenya cultural centre.

He called it ‘Loose Ends’ which made sense since there are so many loose ends in this drama that one can’t decide whether the play is meant to be a mystery or if the playwright needs to head back to the drawing board and give his two characters more clarity of motivation.

The first confusion comes out soon after we meet the weeping woman, Una, who we learn her sister was recently murdered and police had just found her remains. Una’s tears are apparently for her sister, but the only reason we find this out is by the arrival of a mystery man who looks like a nuisance or a determined do-gooder. He sees the woman weeping and asks genuinely if he can help. But then, when she tells him to go away, he doesn’t. Why the persistence? It takes too long to find out that by some uncanny coincidence, he and the weeper, una, once had a passionate love affair. It is never explained how he doesn’t recognized Una despite the many years that have passed since they were together. Nor is it made clear how Una didn’t recognize her former lover initually. Or did she but pretended she did not? And if that was not the case, then what’s her motivation?

Dr b eventually suggested that una planned her game in advance of being seated somewhere just outside the doctor’s office. But before that hypothetical theory comes up, they both seem to get an ‘ah ha’ moment when they recognize one another. Una is transformed from being a crying hothead who’d shouted at the doctor to stop pestering her into a loving, affectionate girl who recalled the passion they had for one another. Meanwhile, there are all these imploring voices from inside his house. They come first from his wife, then from his young daughter, people who eventually keep the doctor fixed with his family and unprepared to run away with Una as she wants.

As far as character development, it’s the doctor who describes what happened to him when it was discovered he had an affair with a minor. (Una was 15 when they met and fell in love). There’s a trial where he is accused of being  pedifile anconvicte for it. Hiyears in prison, a chunk of which kept him in solitary confinement; the rest found him being beaten and tortured by fellow fell inmates who are dads with daughters who feel the fear of their baby girl getting raped by a pedifile like the doctor.

Una’s reaction to his story is as unrelenting as his when trying to waken one man’s care for a supposed stranger. she wants the two of them to revive their relationship and run away together. To him its no longer  an option. Besides, he tells her, if we did do as she wished, they would never be socially accepted. He would always be seen as the pediphile who assaulted a child.

It apparently infuriates Una that the doctor might love his wife and child more than her. Now we are starting to see a dangerous dimension of Una’s passionate. We haven’t learned enough about Una’s background to know her mental stability or lack thereof.  We heard briefly about her brother and sisters and apparently that they are all orphans, but even the story of her sister who was deemed a prostitute is never brought up again, therefore, another loose end.

But probably the biggest loose end of all is the relationship that Una and the doctor had and continue to have, despite the doctor ff. Una suggests that she has a child whose father I the doctor but he had never been told. That idea is also not developed so it’s yet another loose end.

And finally, it’s the last scene when we are left with a blackout and a radio announcement that the public and FBI are looking for a young woman who might have a motive for killing her former lover.

There seem to be many plays coming out with this cliff hanger ending. They seem to think it is clever. But to me, it’s the ultimate unresolved loose end that young theatre companies like to produce. But tome, they are a lazy man’s way of resolving an end that is crisp and clear and doing the easy nan thing. So we can at lleast congratulate Mavin for correctly identifying his play with the ultimate loose end which is death.

banana hill ---draft

 

There’s a Grand Reunion going on right now up at the banana hill Art Gallery where more than a dozen of the first, second, and third generation of Banana Hill artists responded to Shine Tani’s call to come and be part of a group exhibition that he called____

Many were there when the Banana Hill studio officially became a gallery in 1996. Quite a few were active members when the BH Studio took off in 1994. And there were some who were with Shine even before the studio came into being, like his wife Rahab. They were among the up-and-coming artists who played their part, by necessity to encourage Shine to recognize his latent potential to teach, preach and promote KENYAN art when few people even imagined that any such thing apart from curios, baskets, and other crafts. These boiled down to being abused dismissively as ‘souvenir art’, absolutely unrelated to contemporarily African art, such as what existed in west Africa.

It’s a cultural battle still being fought today. But the smarter Kenyan artists don’t bother with those battles. They’ve realized its more important to work, and prove their critics wrong by allowing them to see Kenyan art for themselves.

Unfortunately, some of the earliest to be inspired by Shine were either family or close friends who either died or moved out into other kinds of work. “But as the seventh-born in my family, I was inspired by my two older brothers, Henry Mungai who died and Joseph Karisha,” Shine told BD Life last weekend. “We were from Ngecha, and many people say Henry was the first Ngecha artist to take his art seriously>” he adds. Many Ngecha artists followed after Henry, like Wanyu Brush, Chain Muhandi, Sebastion Kiarie, Allan Githuka, Julius Kimemiah, Martin Muhoro, Joseph Kamundia, Jeff Wambugu, --------, and Peter Kibunga, all of whose paintings at the Gallery for this historic showcase.

There were others who were with shine in the beginning, but moved on.” Shine recalled, “Meek Gichugu now lives in Paris but initially, he was with us,” he adds. James Mbuthia was also part of the BH Studio at one time as was John Silver Kimani and Joseph Cartoon. Mbuthia moved on to work with One Off gallery and Ramoma while Silver Moved to Kuona trust, and Cartoon went solo.

The local art scene has been very fluid and ever-changing, but definitely developing, and evolving. It’s happening among Kenyan artists everywhere, but probably the best illustration of that fact at BH can be seen in the paintings of Rahab Njambi Shine. Several of her early works are in the exhibition. So are a couple more contemporary ones that will show the tremendous change that she continues to go through.    

Shine’s paintings are also in the exhibition. But ever since he agreed to take charge and ownership of the BHG (rather than let the whole thing flop) he also knew he was becoming Kenya’s first African owner of an art institution, and that was a full-time job.  So he has much less time to devote to his painting, “But I’m come back to it this year,” he promised. That is also true of gifted artists like martin kamuyu and Martin Muhoro who nearly drown themselves to death in booze, but now are finally on the way back to sobriety and their art as a form of creative therapy.

In the meantime, artists from all over central province And beyond were (FLOCKING TO) finding their way to BH. For instance, there was kamuyu from Naivasha, Andrew kamundia from Ruai, Leonard Ndure from Dagoretti, and Doreen Mweni from Nakuru, and even Rahab Njambi was from Lari, not     Banana hill or ngecha. Finally, the most recent member of the bh family is Vincent shikuku, from Bungoma, in western kenya.

It was ruth Schaffner of gallery watatu who first fell under the spell of  Ngecha artists whose quantity and quality were inexplicably

 

BONI IS BACK-

 When Boniface Maina made his move out of Nairobi, back home to Nanyuki, in 2017, nobody knew how long he would be gone.

Having been a co-founder of Brush tu Artists Collective with David Thuku and Michael Musyoka, he would always be a Brush tu artist, no matter where he was based; that was certain. But other than that, no one could tell when he’d be back or what direction his art would take.

Despite being very much a member of the Brush tu family, he had always had his own singular style of operating. As he put it in Susan Githuku’s book, Visual Voices, he had always been experimental in his approach to his art. He was always open to reinventing himself stylistically. So, when we heard he was having his first solo exhibition in a while at Red Hill Gallery in early April, BD Life was keen to be there on time.

We had been to numerous exhibitions featuring Boni’s art in the past. He had one solo exhibition at the now defunct Art Space in Chiromo run by Wambui Collemore, and countless group shows, like ones he had at the Russian Embassy, another in Lamu at the Peponi Hotel, and many others at Brush tu, first when it initially opened in Buru Buru Phase one and just the trio were exhibiting, and another when the group moved literally across the street and into a house so they could accommodate more up-and-coming artists who wanted to work closely with the troika of Boni, Thuku and Musyoka..

The collective was growing so fast that they had to tear down a wall so as to enlarge the space and accommodate still more artists. It was a timely move since a donor had stepped in to enable Brush tu to have art residencies that proved to attract a Pan African set of artists to come and work for several months at Brush tu.

This is also when the collective started having monthly Open Houses where Boni’s art was featured along with a whole new generation of painters and sculptors appearing, some Kenyan, others international. This was also when we finally see women like Sebawali Sio and Bushkimani Moira joining the collective, and bringing new perspectives to the group. At every show one would find Boni taking on different approaches.

Most recently, before he went home for many months, Boni introduced us to a new character in his art. He was quite unlike the Smokey character who has never quite revealed himself through his maker, Paul Onditi. But then, it seemed he was meant to walk us through his encounters with dystopic worlds to witness them firsthand like Smokey.

Boni’s nameless fellow seemed to have a more developed sense of personality and identity.  His sole reason for joining Boni’s artistic ‘ecosystem’ seems to be for expressing Boni’s sense of freedom: freedom to relax, to watch a sunset, or to leap into new realms of the unknown. And while his man seems to be apolitical, blissful despite the dystopic blight many have to face every day, Boni has chosen to peel off the skin of our character, so that his identity transcends the problems of race, ethnicity, and even age. His man is clothed in his muscular form.

We expected to find him at Red Hill Gallery when his show opened recently. He was there and still refreshingly representative of the artist’s free spirit. But the show, entitled ‘Delicate Densities’ seemed to be more about Boni’s experimentations with multimedia.

He had always loved drawing and that is what inspired him to come to Nairobi to attend first, the YMCA National Training Centre followed by another degree in painting and drawing from BIFA, the Buru Buru Institute of Fine Art. But now, in this show, Boni outdoes himself, infusing moods and moments into a whole range of intersecting elements. He works with everything from bleach and ink on canvas and special watercolor paper. He also works with paints and brushes on wooden planks on which he also etches. He even takes up carpentry to design and assemble some of his most ambitious works which are more like sculptures than three dimensional paintings. And while the exhibition also includes a number of works from earlier periods of his artistic evolution, they also reveal just how far Boni has come since he first arrived in Nairobi in the early days of the new millennium.  

Ultimately, it’s the pleasure the artist finds in experimenting in the arts has been a constant that has led to our ongoing appreciation of Boniface Maina.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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 [ms1]

KIMATHI---DRAFT

POSITIVE SPIRIT OF THE ARTIST EARNS HIM ACCOLADES

By Margaretta wa Gacheru

It was much more than simply a Book Launch, although the book itself is a masterpiece devoted to revealing the multifaceted genius of one Kenyan artist, Richard ‘Kim’ Kimathi.

It was also more than an art exhibition opening for Kimathi at One Off Gallery last Thursday night with his solo show entitled ‘In Conversation’.

Instead, it was more like the coronation of a prince into the enclave of Pan-African star artists who had already been bestowed with blessings by the Almas Art Foundation. That’s the London-based art foundation established by the British-Somali philanthropist Farah Fonkenell` to help build global awareness of the artistic genius, dynamism, and vibrancy of the arts in Africa and the Southern hemisphere broadly. Her foundation has already uplifted awareness in the international art world of star artists from such countries as Senegal, Pakistan, Spain, and Italy. And now Kenya has joined this illustrious set of artists.

Farah had settled on Kenya as the site of her latest book project by 2021. That was when she, assisted by One Off Gallery and a team of Kenyan curators, scholars, and critics set out to find the most compelling and gifted artist that she would invite to participate in Almas’ latest project.

No pressure was put on the artist to participate. But really, what artist do you know would have declined an offer of not only a comprehensive book about their art and life to be published in UK? The Foundation would also fund an exhibition of his or her latest works (In Conversation), most of which would be included in the book. There would be funds given and who knows what other events might take place, especially through encounters with fellow-artists already honored by Almas. And through the buzz that’s bound to arise from another name going out on the air waves, there would also be greater global awareness of Kimathi and other Kenyan artists as well.

That Kimathi is deserving of all these honors, there is little doubt. But since he is such a quiet, unassuming guy and a dedicated dad of three, he prefers to stay out of the limelight. If that may have led to Kimathi being less known than other local luminaries, that is not the case for one long-time collector of Kimathi’s art from New York. In Kenya on holiday, once she heard that her favorite Kenyan artist was having a Book Launch, came quickly to One Off just in time to meet the artist and his generous benefactors.

“I’ve been collecting Richard’s art for many years, and I’ve loved watching the way his art has evolved, so I simply had to come tonight,” she told BD Life a few minutes after her arrival at the gallery where she first encountered his art.

The book itself beautifully illustrates Kimathi’s most recent works, produced between 2022 and 2023. Historically, he has been an experimental artist, exploring the artistic possibilities of painting with both palette knife and brush. But drawing has always been his forte. That aptitude got refined in secondary school where his teachers would have him illustrate their lecture points with Kimathi drawing in chalk on school blackboards.

 Then when he first came to Nairobi to attend the now defunct Creative Arts Centre, he strengthened those skills along with painting, etching, collage, and printmaking, all of which he’s experimented with ever since. Kimathi says he also studied graphic design which led him to even greater appreciation of lines and design. One can see that influence reflected in beautiful, albeit decorative works like his large-scale paintings filled with flower blossoms, one with swirling men mixed in, one with just the flowers in full bloom.

Asking Kimathi on the evening of his opening, where his new-found love of the floral came from, he requested that we go watch the video to get the answer to our query. The video, which was at the far end of the gallery, had also been generated by the Almas Foundation. It focuses on the artist’s current lifestyle. home studio and garden. It is also where you can see the flower buds and their influence on his art.

Kimathi’s current series largely highlights the experience of young men ‘hanging out’ (my term). He describes them as being ‘in conversation’, not ‘lazy’ lay-abouts, or slow-moving job-seekers. Ever nonjudgmental, Kimathi’s choice of colors further reflects the positive spirit of an artist who says he loves painting the everyday life all around him, everything from stray dogs and cats to long (or short) lines of guys sustaining themselves ‘in conversations.”  

 

 

WITNESSING THE TRAUMA OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted April 8, 2024)

Irene Mungai may not have known the people’s response to Unmarried, the play that she scripted and produced at Braeburn Theatre last weekend.

But to some in her audience, especially to women, the play was a horror story and nightmare that women across the planet have faced. It’s euphemistically termed sexual abuse, but in reality, the word is Rape.

In Unmarried, the story begins with the last scene of the play, after which everything is a flashback. It’s a provocative moment with a woman, looking frazzled and out of control, wielding a gun which she points at three people as well as at herself. They beg her to put down the gun. Instead, there’s a blackout and one shot is heard. It’s a baffling scene, but the flashback will hopefully trace what led up to that inexplicable ending.

It begins with our meeting Stella (Irene Mungai), a charming and chaste young woman who’s enthusiastic about marrying her Rasta boyfriend Lenny (Simon Kimani), but he is not. Nonetheless, he’s inclined to push off other men from Stella, like Lucas (Antony Kituku) who attends the same buy-your-blessings hallelujah church as Stella. She isn’t interested in Luca in any case, since she had high hopes for a life with Lenny. When he breaks up with her, she’s heartbroken, leading her to take some time off from her work and head to the Coast.

 It is now that the horror story begins. The Coast is where she meets Juma (Majestic Steve) by happenstance. They seem to have mutual friends and he seems pleasant enough. So, when he informs her his work is taking him to Nairobi where he claims he doesn’t know his way around, she offers to assist him with a housing agent. They agree to meet once he gets to town. By this time, she had no idea he already has a home and a wife in Nairobi. Nor does she know that her bubbly girlfriend Fatma (Abigale Munyau) is Juma’s wife. That would only come out later, but it means that Juma knows lots more about Stella than she knows about him.

In any case, they meet for tea in Nairobi shortly thereafter, and he suggests they go see the place that he’d found to stay in until he finds a better one with her help. She agrees, never imagining what lay ahead. When they reach his place, it’s a tiny unadorned room, just big enough for a bed. It’s there that the showdown begins. She gets ready to go, but when he blocks her way, she finally reckons she’s in danger. But by then, she is already trapped. Prior to this moment, Stella had been terribly naïve, like millions of women who find themselves in comparable circumstances. They all have horror stories they might never tell. But Stella puts us through the terrifying experience of getting raped by a guy who has no mercy, only lust and power to overwhelm the woman.

In Unmarried, the acting of both Irene and Steve, was painfully powerful. Stella had been trapped by Juma, yet she resisted up to the end. Even with her fighting spirit, her physical strength was no match compared to his. Yet her passionate fight to protect herself felt very real. So did Juma’s predator lust to ‘have his way’ with her.

One cannot know whether Stella was a virgin before being violated by Juma, but nothing in the play suggests she had broken her church pledge to abstain from sex. If she had been abstinent, her rape would have been even more mournful, painful and traumatizing. 

Only in the last few years has the PTSD (Post traumatic stress disorder) in soldiers who witnessed the horrifying pain, inhuman cruelty, and destructive power of war. In contrast, psychologists have yet to fully address the PTSD affecting women who have been raped. And that’s in spite of the fact that rape, like war, has a mentally scaring impact on women who have experienced the trauma of sexual assault.

Then, for Stella to discover that her friend Fatma is actually Juma’s wife compounded her feeling of betrayal. But it’s the sight of Juma who had the audacity to come to her house, that triggered her running for her gun.

In the end, we don’t know who Stella shot, but her reaction to the sight of her rapist has a warped logic, especially as she’s still suffering from PTSD brought on by the trauma of being violated, body and soul, by rape.

 

LEGACY, A MUSICAL TALE OF REBELLION AND REDEMPTION

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 4. 2.2024)

As the musical theatre, Legacy was being staged in a church, (the International Christian Centre), on Easter weekend, one could easily assume the show was about the traditional Bible-based story that gets told and retold every year.

But no! The story, scripted by JJ Jumbi, and directed by Gibson Ndaiga, had nothing to do with restaging the story of Jesus Christ. It’s true that both stories are about the power of Life over death. But Legacy comes even closer to home in that its storyline relates to issues affecting the ICC family and friends. They include issues like rebellious youth and domineering parents who may not understand that they and their children live in two different spheres of consciousness and culture.

That is certainly true of Rahab (Amy Muthoni) and her parents, Pastor Eli  (Sammy Waweru) and his wife, Prophetess Gladys (Cynthia Nzuki). Rahab is an only child to the Christian couple who had tried to have a child for many years until one day, Rahab arrived. Deemed a gift from God, she was pampered from the day she was born. That led to her taking her privileges for granted. She behaved like the prodigal son who walked away from privilege in order to claim his freedom. Yet both characters find out the hard way that they need to humble themselves to both their parents and to the Higher Power that has saved them from getting lost forever.  

In Rahab’s case, the problem is also her parents. They believe they know exactly what their daughter is meant to do and be. But she has other plans. She has no intention of working within the narrow church boundaries with them, as they want her to do. So, on the day they have a major falling out over their sharply different perspectives, Rahab has already prepared to leave, although not on such volatile terms. She planned to go out and first look for a place to share her well-trained vocal and dancing skills. But once she and her mom practically go fisticuffs* over her defiance, she gets her luggage and simply walks out on them. Her trendy pants and crop top shirt shock them nearly as much as her talk-back attitude toward her mom’s autocratic assertion that her daughter must do as she says, no matter what.  In a sense, the mom leaves Rahab no alternative except for her to step out on her own, which she does.

She is fortunate to find instant success and stardom while dancing in a local lounge with a team of fresh, funky dancers. A talent scout, Razmatazz (Luvai Mike) sees her and senses that this ‘people’s choice’ of a star is someone to recruit. Acting like a Casanova and independent talent scout, he goes in for the ‘kill’, killing her softly with his promises of global travel and worldwide stardom. The arrival of Faya Mama (Kerry Kagiri) transforms the electricity in the room, making everything hot and slightly ominous. Rahab is still a ‘babe in the wood’ who doesn’t know how to deal with fast-talking moguls like the Faya Mama who immediately signs her on a contract she never lets Rahab see, only sign.

Now made over into RayBaby, Rahab tells her parents this is her new secular lifestyle, and to protect them and their church from getting stigmatized as ‘sinners’’ because of her association with them, she promises to change her name so nobody will know she is their daughter. It’s Raybaby who has got all of social media buzzing about her beauty, musical, and dancing skills. She soaks up her new-found fandom which turns out to be a fickle bunch who dump her overnight. It turns out that somebody somewhere injected nasty notions of Raybaby onto the internet and the ugly trending instantly spread like a cancer, infecting ever cell it touched as it circled round the world wide web.

Rahab’s fate might have been like the prodigal son’s wherein she returns home humbled and contrite. But before that happens, she gets clobbered by thugs and nearly dies. But ‘miraculously’, Ramatazz shows up like a good Samaritan (or a prince charming). Either way, his heart has melted for her even as Rahab discovers he worked for the Fire queen who sought to exploit young women like her. But never mind, Rahab tells her parents. He’s the one who found her, took her to hospital, and thus saved her life.

So by the end of Legacy, one can appreciate how it’s ultimately a timely, contemporary tale of redemption, renewal, and resurrection.