By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 2 April 2019)
Adam Masava may be best remembered as
the artist who figured out how to make art and sports merge to serve both their
interest simultaneously.
He did it when he opened an online
art auction to raise funds for young footballers from South B Sports Academy to
go to Sweden to participate in an International youth football tournament. Adam
raised the funds, and the South B team got to Sweden where they successfully
played with footballers from all over the world.
Adam had already started the Mukuru
Art Club under the Academy’s umbrella by then. “The Academy was started in 2009
by my friend John Mandela who wanted to help kids from the slums have healthy
alternatives to hanging out in the streets,” says Masava who joined Mandela in
2010.
“I could see that some of the kids
weren’t keen on sports, so I decided to start them doing art,” says the mentor
of more than a dozen young men and women, most of whom have been painting with
him since the club began.
Adam says he named the club ‘Mukuru’ for
a reason. “I’m originally from Mukuru slum as are most of our members. I wanted
us to always remember where we came from,” says this artist-mentor who’s subsequently
exhibited all over Europe, from Germany, Slovakia and Czech Republic to Austria
and the Netherlands.
Adam’s initial training in art was at
the Mukuru Arts and Crafts Centre where the nuns who started the centre often
brought in artists from abroad to teach their students. He studied with other
future artists, several of whom have, like him, gone on to start art centres of
their own. One was Shabu Mwangi who started Wajukuu Art Centre a bit before
Adam established his art club. Both young men had the same goal, to help youth
from the slums learn skills in fine art free of charge.
But ever since the Club had to move
out of the spacious school hall where it began and into Adam’s tiny South B
studio, the group feels more like an artists’ collective than an after-school
art club.
“I’d previously been teaching
hundreds of kids, some as young as six. But when we had to move, I had to be selective
since my space is quite small by comparison to the school hall,” he says.
Recently the club had its first group
exhibition on the rooftop above Adam’s studio. “It was to officially launch our
new location,” says Adam who’d asked Lara Ray of the Polka Dot Gallery in Karen
to help curate the exhibition.
“The exhibition was quite successful,”
says Tony Bulima, the one club member that Adam met by chance when both were
visiting GoDown Art Centre. “Tony was there looking for a mentor to teach him
to paint, so I invited him to join us in South B,” recalls Adam.
These aren’t all the club members,
but they all took part in that first show. And many of them sold their artwork
that day, says Adam.
Mukuru Art Club will be having its
second exhibition in June. In the meantime, Lara has put Club members’ artworks
online at the Polka Dot Gallery website.
“Thanks to Lara, we’ve already five
paintings online,” says Adam whose online art sales practice has come full circle.
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