By
Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 20th December 2019)
Michael Soi
is a Kenyan artist that the public tends to either love or love to hate.
The lovers
of Soi’s artwork are in the majority. For who cannot love his playful
caricatures and almost cartoon-like portraits of Nairobi’s nightlife. His bar
scenes are always filled with colorful characters who are clearly having fun
although not necessarily in the most innocent of ways. But even his scenes of
seduction are playful and agreeable to all parties involved.
The problem
with the minority who don’t love Soi’s art is that they tend to read too much
naughtiness into it. Instead of understanding the artist is a satirist making
fun of human foibles and frailties, the haters tend to be judgmental critics
who assume Soi condones everything he paints.
In fact, Soi
is as non-judgmental a figurative artist as they come. He paints what he sees
although his art isn’t exactly realism. It’s more like social realism in that his
subject-matter is all about society with a specific focus on Nairobi club life,
including all that transpires there.
He cannot
help it if his paintings tell stories about relationships, be they inter-racial,
inter-generational and even bi-sexual or gay.
Funny thing
is that in his current exhibition, running through January 10th at
Circle Art Gallery, entitled ‘Heaven can Wait’, Soi spends less time exploring
club life. Whether he aimed to tone down his salacious satire on purpose for
the more ‘respectable’ audience that would come view his work at Circle, we
cannot know.
But Soi’s
artwork has never been exclusively about life in the bars and the discos. He
has also had a political edge that often finds its way into his work. It can be
found at Circle Art in pieces like ‘Mr Headmaster’ and ‘Everyone Loves Africa’.
‘Mr
Headmaster’ reveals a man dressed respectably in a suit but climbing on the
back of a large woman with a beer clutched firmly in hand. He’s holding the
woman (perhaps a fellow teacher) just as tightly. But he’s surrounded by
gapping eyes of children dressed in school uniforms, taking note of their head
teacher’s out-of-control conduct. Not the best role model for young men or
women in the crowd to see. But in today’s Kenya, too many school teachers,
including headmasters are sexually abusing (mainly) young women and girls. It’s
an issue society shouldn’t ignore, which is what Soi’s painting is effectively
saying.
The other
overtly political piece in his latest solo show is ‘Everyone Love Africa’. In
the past, he’s created an extensive body of work around the theme, ‘China Loves
Africa’. But in this piece, he’s not only observing one grabby super-power
moving in on Africa. ‘Everyone’ in this case is represented by four grabby
hands, each painted with a super-power flag and reaching out towards the
African continent. There are also four small circles hovering between the
hands, as if to say it’s not just the super-powers, EU and the rest, reaching
in toward the region. It’s also lesser powers involved in the restaging of the
19th century ‘Scramble for Africa’, only with cooler, more
calculating hands.
Otherwise,
the piece that I found the funniest in Soi’s show (it made me laugh out loud!)
is the one he calls ‘Married People’. Soi’s art is rarely subtle, but that’s
partly what makes it such fun. He’s tuned into what really happens to human
beings, be they sex workers prepared to get to work in ‘Thursday Night Live’ or
‘Monday Morning’ where the man is so hung over from the weekend, he has to be
wheel-barrowed to the bus stop by the wife who is also heavy-laden with a child
wrapped onto her back.
‘Married
People’ portrays the husband and his wife sharing the bathroom as she shaves
her armpit while he sits on the ‘can’ reaching for the toilet paper and
observing his wife in her scanty underwear. Soi packs the whole story in a
painting. These two are no longer in the phase of wedlock known as romantic
love. They are now more like roommates who must endure one another’s earthy
habits and essential toiletries.
Soi only has
18 pieces in ‘Heaven can Wait’ but everyone has multiple tales to tell. And
while quite a few have already sold, it’s still worth a trip to see them all,
be they sold or not, at Circle Art.
By the way,
for your calendar, Circle’s Art Auction East Africa will take place March 6,
2020 at Radisson Blu Hotel.
Michael's Queen of Hearts
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