By
Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 12 October 2019)
Corporate
firms like Ogilvy Africa and McKinsey have finally come to realize that Kenyan
art is for Kenyans and their clients to appreciate and potentially to own. That
is how both companies have begun mounting art exhibitions featuring up-and-coming
as well as established artists in their offices.
McKinsey
have been at it a bit longer than Ogilvy Africa, but Ogilvy is a bit more
transparent in that when they host local artists, they invite the public to
come see the artwork, whereas McKinsey is more exclusive, showing artists’
works to only their office staff and their clients.
Either way,
it’s a good idea for young artists, many of whom hunger for opportunities to
exhibit their art. The advantage of having a show at Ogilvy is that media is more
involved in promoting the artists.
“We try to
get the artists on all media platforms,” says Naomi Mutua who’s in charge of
this particular Ogilvy project. ‘We strive to get them on television and
YouTube as well as onto other digital platforms. We also notify our clients to
come by our offices and see the art themselves,” she adds.
That
approach is useful to the artists since one part of moving forward in their
artistic career is what marketers call ‘building a brand’. It’s what
internationally-known artists like Picasso and Salvador Dali understood very
well.
At Ogilvy
Africa, it was actually a Frenchman, Mathieu Plassard, the firm’s outgoing CEO
who initiated the art project that Naomi is now managing.
“It’s
actually part of our Ogilvy Give program aimed at giving back to society, both
in terms of time and space,” says Naomi.
The space
factor is where the premises of Ogilvy are now getting converted into a
quasi-art space where local artists can both exhibit and sell their artworks.
The first artist selected to showcase his art at Ogilvy was Lemek Tompoika. The
second set of artists who currently have their paintings on display on two
floors of their offices are Taabu Munyoki and Joseph ‘Ango’ Makau.
“Our
selection team couldn’t decide between these two artists, so we finally decided
to host them both,” says Naomi who had put out an online call-out to artists to
submit their portfolios.
“The team
included members of four departments, namely the creative team, public
relations, digital and public service,” she says. “None were especially art
lovers, but that was okay since we know that appreciation of art is a very
subjective experience.”
Both Taabu
and Ango have connections with Kenyatta University. Taabu graduated from there
in Fine art and Ango is currently in the same program, having already received
a KU diploma in Art.
Taabu, whose
artworks are also at Nairobi National Museum as part of the Kenya Arts Diary
2020 exhibition, has shared a mixture of works at Ogilvy. They include several
silkscreen prints, a few digital artworks, one that is mixed media and the rest
are acrylics on canvas. The themes of her paintings are just as eclectic
although a large portion of them explores various realms of African womanhood.
A few of Ango’s
artworks are also being exhibited elsewhere. But the works he has displayed at
Ogilvy haven’t been shown before. Taking a more surrealistic approach to his
art, he paints solely in acrylics on canvas. But his art has an almost
three-dimensional effect as his color schemes seem to be layered as are his
background designs which tend to be either arabesque or circular or
doodle-like.
With love as
his central theme, Argo’s interpretations of relationships are especially
provocative. But while both he and Taabu explore an array of topics in their
art, hers more naturalistic, his surrealistic, they both brought one piece each
that is subtly political in content.
For Taabu
the painting is ‘Oblivion’ and for Ango, it’s ‘Enormity of our Habitudes’. In
her case, it’s again a woman as the focus of the work. She’s asleep on the pavement,
under a shabby blanket. Behind her are a dozen political posters plastered on
the brick wall behind her. The painting seems to ask: Is it she who is
oblivious or the politicians jockeying for political power who are blind and
dumb to her needs and the conditions of millions of Kenyans who are as
impoverished as she could be.
Ango’s
‘Enormity…” is all about gluttony and excess. Both works reflect a subtle sense
of class consciousness and the huge gap existing between Kenya’s rich and poor.
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