LADIES' NIPPLES SEEN AS SCULPTURE NOT SHAME

Bedecked with a full-head of forest green hair and complimented by bright-eyed green lashes, pencil-thin eye liner, and green eye shadow, Joy Maringa presents the embodiment of cutting-edge contemporary culture, beauty, and art.

It would seem she doesn’t see herself as a spectacle, especially as other young women in Nairobi are changing their hair color every month.

“During my days working exclusively as a make-up artist, I came to appreciate it as a form of visual art,” she told BD Life.” Indeed, just like a professional painter, she worked with palettes filled with color. She worked and still works with an array of brushes, only on a smaller scale.

Her transition from makeup artist to full-time professional painter who is also working as a sculptor in her current showcase at Kobo Gallery came gradually. But from the look of her first solo exhibition which she entitled “Pertinent Perspective’, she is definitely entitled to claim the title of full-time professional visual artist.

“Actually, I consider myself both a makeup and a visual artist since I’m still being called to do people’s makeup and I love doing it for them. It’s fun,” she adds.

So is ‘Pertinent perspectives’ which could be seen as a jab at another perspective called ‘the male gaze.”

As you walk into Kobo’s vast gallery space, the show gives no hint of being even slightly subversive. One sees a long row of large square-shaped paintings, each covered in a single color, be it green, yellow, brown or black. Then on top of the color are affixed rows and rows of brown-colored mini-sculptures.

Then, she’s got several stands with assorted boxes on top of them. We gravitate towards one stand that has an open box looking like the kind filled with over-priced

European dark chocolates. It is clearly meant to look that way. But the ‘chocolates’ are tiny, duplicated sculptures shaped like what? I ask the artist.

“They are shaped like large nipples, the ones at the tip of women’s breasts,” Joy explains.

Before she can reveal where her fascination with women’s nipples comes from, we head over to one of her large square paintings. We want to know why the uniformity of shape in them. “I like order in my things, and always have,” she says.

But here again, as in the “chocolate box”, she has uniformly aligned mini-sculptures which she had cast not in brass as she had hoped to do, but in a mix of dental stone powder.

“I created two molds since women’s breasts are never exactly alike. Neither are their nipples,” she says, speaking as if she’s an expert in the study of women’s nipples. It turns out, she is.

“Supposedly, women’s nipples (not their breasts) are not to be shown in public. And if they are , women are meant to feel shame,” she adds. She notes that in traditional African society, there was no shame in showing women’s breasts. But now, it's taboo. The nipple has become a sexual turn-on for Westernized men, she says. It’s a function of modernity, male dominance in Western culture, and the ‘male gaze’ which Joy is challenging. It’s as if she is putting all those nipples out there on canvas, in chocolate boxes, and even in her colorful make-up palette to make a proud statement about the beauty of ladies’ nipples.

Shameless about her own big nipples now, Joy admits she grew up feeling ashamed of hers. Men used to abuse her publicly, or laugh sarcastically, as if she was a deformed misfit. 

Now is her time to fight back in the only way she knows how, with her art.

The show itself doesn’t feel vengeful or erotic even though she says men apparently have been programmed in these times to get excited when they see women or girls with shapely boobs. Yet even I can recall when African men were respectful of women’s breasts. They said breasts were for babies to suckle, not for men to paw.

Treading on uncharted territory, one can’t remember a time in art history when women’s nipples were details highlighted by the art historians.  Women’s breasts were featured in many classical paintings, although not without controversy.

As increasing number of Kenyan women come out and make radical statements with their art, the male gaze will gradually lose its power to dominate how women see themselves. It’s already begun as more women artists, like Joy, have a ‘pertinent perspective’ that is not at war with men. It’s simply illustrating their own artistic empowerment, and it’s about time.

 

draft for zippy's film OTIS JANAM 4.30.24

 

 eDITOR'S NOTE. I WAS AT  WAR WITH MY COMPUTER OVER THIS STORY BUT IF YOU SCROLLL DOWN DOWN DOWN IT IS THERE, FRAGMENTED A BIT AND MISSING ONE WORD, VIEW  POINT OF VIEW. BUT PLEASE READ.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Otis Janam may not be Kenya’s first indigenous language film that’s been scripted and produced by Kenyan filmmakers.

But what’s certain after seeing the film’s official premiere last weekend at Diamond Plaza is that Dr Zippy Okoth wrote her best story yet after bringing us a series of wonderful stage plays, and short films producing them through her Legacy Film Lab.

In Otis Janam, which she produced with support from the

German Embassy. GIZ, and the Kenya Film Commission, Dr Zippy with the Film Lab, includes a fascinating set of social and cultural issues, framed by the beautiful, wish-come-true love story. But it is complicated by everything from polygamy, alcoholism, sexism and domestic violence.

And while the film has been scripted and staged in Dhuluo, it’s got easy-to-read subtitles and a demonstrative cast, so the story is not difficult to understand.

And besides drafting, directing, and co-producing, Zippy also assembled a cast of some of the country’s best Lu view that actors speaking in their mother tongues convey greater authenticity in their performances. It liberates them to perform with greater freedom and inspiration

That is clear from the moment we meet Otis Janam (Nick Kwach) and his best buddy Jarieko (Okal Michael(). The two had been best friends since secondary school. They had been a trio of smart guys at school, but after graduating form four, Number three fled rural life at the lake and went to work in town. Jariwko got a job close by, and Otis went back to the lake and took to drinking (not fishing), and was now known by local villagers as lazy good-for-nothing sot who had once been a great fisherman but now is simply a lost soul.

Meanwhile, Jarieko has never given up on Otis. Instead, he tells him about an upcoming boat race, similar to one Otis had won many years before when he, had not just won; he’d broken records and been treated like an Olympic star by fellow villagers. But he hadn’t retained that status after he lost in later years and taken to booze.

The crazy thing about the upcoming race is that Api’s dad, Jatelo Okoth (Anthony Okoth) being the richest man in the village and the one sponsoring the race, is also giving the winner the incredible prize of his beautiful daughter, Api (Sarah Masese).

It seems obvious from here on out that Otis will now have a fresh incentive to gain back his once powerful prowess in order to win the lovely Api as his wife.

But Zippy’s inclusion of Api as a prize to be commodified like a pot of gold or sack of potatoes, is not so surprising in traditional culture. But it foreshadows how and why women react near the end of our story.

In any case, neither Otis nor Api had been married before, which had disturbed Jatelo, Api’s dad and to Jarieko, Otis’s buddy.

Meanwhile, Api’s an obedient daughter who does everything her father wishes. He wants his legacy as the one-time greatest boat race champion to be remembered in the grandson Api will have once she’s wed.

She doesn’t yet know that to ensure he gets what he wants, he has organized the boat race, including her as first prize.

When Otis hears that she’s the prize, he suddenly regains his energy, enthusiasm for life, and desire to get moving. He eventually wins the race and they fall madly in love.

But after                                              three kids and a busy, successful business of her own, she proposes he get a second wife. He is shocked as are we. He finally accepts her plan. But their consequences are painful and predictable.

It marks the turning point that will change her life altogether. For no longer will she be obedient and deferential to men. We see this after he’s gone back to boozing, and he’s even become a wife beater.

After that, Api has a no-holds-barred attitude once she hears there’s another boat-race the winner of which will win their own boat plus a big cash award. She secretly starts training to race, and is joined by other village women whose boat finally wins the race.

It’s a resounding success for women, especially African women including Dr Zippy herself.

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