Confusing Sky by Richard Kimathi
By
Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 1st August 2019 to SN&BD)
Richard Kimathi’s
exhibition of paintings at One Off Gallery entitled ‘Wounds’ is soon to close. It
is well worth making a trip out to Rosslyn to see it before it does.
‘Wounds’
comes on the heels of another one-man show, ‘Bare Knuckle’, that Kimathi, one
of Kenya’s post prominent painters, had last year at One Off which also
featured rows of little men of nondescript identities. They were and still are
figures whose nationalities, color, creed and ideology cannot be easily
specified.
In ‘Wounds’,
they might be millennials. What is definitely distinguishable about them is
that they all look sad, befuddled, even wounded, both physically and
psychologically. A few of their wounds are visible ‘as in ‘Gentle Talk’ where
one seems to have a deformed hand, and in ‘Confusing Sky’, another is missing
an arm.
In ‘Conversation IV’ one man seems to have a wound in his heart. And in
‘A Rosy Cheek’, the man’s wound looks self-inflicted since he seems to be
punching himself.
To suggest
Kimathi is passing a powerful message about the dismal state of Kenyans’
collective psyche isn’t difficult to surmise, especially as none of his men
look affluent, like the vast majority of Kenyans. None look comfortable with
their lot in life. Instead, they look like ordinary everyday people whose
discomfort can be seen, and even felt.
Two of the
most disturbing paintings in the show are filled with rows of three-dimensional
cut-out canvas characters who seem to be dangling from the variegated pastel
and grey painted background. Their dangling is ominous in that it suggests their
lives could be hanging by a thread. Their mental state of distress could have
led to a hopelessness that ended in suicide.
In fact, in
Kenya today suicide is a problem, especially among youth who can’t see what
future lay ahead. Many are jobless, penniless and struggling to find means of
surviving. It’s a sorry story, but Kimathi tells it viscerally and in a way
that can stir one’s soul. His paintings are revelatory in that he identifies
deep seeded feelings of disillusionment and anomy among Kenyans that hardly
gets discussed in public. Thus, his show is a sort of invitation to open up and
talk about the angst. Let’s open up and try to find the means to change the narrative.
Let’s learn how ‘well-ness’ can supersede the wounds and positively transform
people’s lives and thus, the society.
In one
painting in particular, Kimathi hints the problem may have political
implications. ‘Inked’ is a piece in which all four guys are showing off their
pinky, the little finger that gets inked after you vote. Every one of the four
has an open wound. Everyone looks sober and possibly disillusioned with the vacuous
consequences of their vote. They voted yet nothing changed.
Kimathi’s
art often speaks for the forgotten man. Giving a visual voice to the voiceless
in ‘Wounds’, his men look like they’re in pain, but their pain is the silent
type. One might see them on a Nairobi street and never know they were hungry,
jobless and dying to see a way forward that might fulfill a fraction of their
dreams. It’s Kimathi who paints their portraits with strokes of empathy as well
as acrylic paint.
Yet one
wouldn’t call Kimathi’s painting realistic. They have a more surreal effect,
especially as his men (plus one polkadot-dressed woman) all seem to be floating
on a blue-grey dreamlike fog that points to nowhere. In any case, what the
artist has done is visually air the angst of millions of young Kenyans who
deserve a better deal in this life.
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