By
Margaretta wa Gacheru (April 2020)
Feeling
depressed, bored, lonely or simply claustrophobic. Maybe you even feel an
affinity with those protesters on the American streets, marching without masks,
some even sporting guns and insisting that the ‘shutdowns’ be lifted so
everything can ‘go back to the way it was’.
Well, one
sure way to lift your spirits is to get into Facebook, Instagram or Twitter and
not read the news, be it ‘fake’ or genuine and true.
Look for the
visual. You may have to work a little bit since your algorithms may not be
periodically sending you images of visual art by Kenyan painters, sculptors,
cartoonists, mixed media or graffiti artists like Michael Soi, Bertiers Mbatia,
Gado, Evans Ngure or Swift 9.
But once you
take a moment and stick in names like Patrick Mukabi or Elizabeth Mazrui or
Mary Collis or Victor Ndula or even Bankslave, you will begin to see an
extraordinary array of artworks that will fill your day with colors,
creativity, light and surprises to rouse your interest in a field you may not
have paid attention to before now.
In this time
of boredom or blight when many are yearning to get back to work or at least get
into something that excites them while they are stuck indoors, the visual arts
online have come alive. They might even serve as a panacea to your boredom.
And not only
with artists who we have seen regularly on either Instagram or Facebook, like
Soi who often shares his paintings ‘in progress’ with photos or short videos.
There’s also
the graffiti artist, one of the trio of BSQ based behind the Kenya Railway
Museum, Msale who also regularly shares his graffiti art.
So does
Bankslave who is another one of Kenya’s great graffiti artists. Both painters
use spray paints as well as acrylics, mainly on massive walls which they share
online either in short films or as still photos. Either way, they exemplify the
creative expression that hasn’t stopped even under our current cramped cultural
conditions of mostly sticking indoors for fear of getting hit by that crazy and
mysterious viral killer, CVD-19.
We have also
seen an artist best known for her colorful abstract expressionist art, Mary
Collis, give us a daily ‘exhibition’ on Facebook of one of her glorious
paintings. She might have painted one canvas in a friend’s colorfully floral
backyard, or another outside in Cape Town overlooking the sea, or yet another
in Zanzibar exploring the fascinating features of its Swahili architecture.
Some of the
artworks online have been created in the past but have never before been seen
in public, like a sculpture shaped long ago by Wambui Collymore which compels
us to recommend she go back to that genre and get serious about what she can
produce sculpturally right now.
Another set
of recent, but pre-CVD-19 art, visible mainly on Instagram is coming out under
the name, DreamKona since that’s the venue (inside Uhuru Garden) where many
Kenyan artists have come in the last two years to create artworks in a kind of
open-air gallery space, created by T.I.C.A.H (Trust for Indigenous Culture, Art
and Health). They include everyone from Anne Mwiti, Patrick Mukabi, Gloria
Muthoka, Nadia Wamunyu, Sane and Eunice Wadu and BSQ’s KayMist, Thufu B and
Msale.
Other works
are being created as we speak or at least since the lockdown began. Many of
them speak directly to our current conditions like Drishti Vohra’s ‘Opening
Doors Within’ on Instagram in which the artist suggests we take this time to be
more introspective and think deeply about all the good things we have to be grateful
for.
Other new
works that we have the opportunity to see are experimental pieces that some
Kenyan artists are working on as they use this time to be daring and
innovative. Like Moira Bushkimani[m1]
who’s been discovering the artistic possibilities of mixing sculpture,
photography and visual art, and sharing it on Instagram.
The other
thing that is exciting about Kenyan visual art in this age of lockdown is that
individuals best known for being something other than an artist are coming out
and revealing what has been there all along, namely their artistic inclination.
One such
Kenyan is the financial analyst, Ritesh Barot who apparently has been quietly
painting watercolors for several years, but only recently exposed his generous
talents on Facebook this week. One reminds me of Claude Monet’s ‘Waterlilies’
only his ‘lilies’ look like sun shine, radiant reminders this too shall pass.
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