LEMEK'S IDENTITY CRISIS EXPLODES INTO LIVING COLOR

                             MAASAI ARTIST SURPRISES IN LIVING COLOR

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (6.2021)

Lemek Sompoika is one Kenyan artist who is truly full of surprises, starting with his name.

When we received the invitation from Red Hill Gallery to come to the opening of the Maasai artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, entitled ‘Abstract Patterns’, we wanted to call the Red Hill founder Hellmuth Rossler-Musch and tell him he had unfortunately misspelt the artist’s name.

Thankfully, we restrained ourselves because Hellmuth was correct. It turns out, Lemek had come across his birth certificate and found his family name indeed began with an S, not a T as we had known him previously.

But the name was just the beginning. Having come from the Creative Arts Centre to Kuona Trust in 2013, Lemek’s earliest exhibitions witnessed his working with newspaper collage to make various political statements. But looking back on those days when we first saw his art in Manjano competitions, the man and his art has morphed many times since then.

Where it became really interesting is when he began questioning his identity. Born a Maasai by parents who were early Christian converts, Lemek got an Anglo-name and a Western education but little knowledge of his Maasai heritage.

But once he began inquiring into his indigenous roots, his art began to mirror the mental metamorphosis that the man was personally going through.

The changes have been gradual, up until now. His show, which opened last Sunday, May 30^th, is mind-boggling by comparison to, not only the collage art which he surpassed light years ago. It’s even a grand departure from his first ‘Identity’ series which in black on white, won him attention, both locally when Ogilvy Africa gave him a three-month exhibition in their Nairobi offices, and regionally, when he was deemed a finalist in the Johannesburg-based ‘L’Atelier’ Art Competition.

In ‘Abstract Patterns’ he still works with graphite, charcoal, and pastels. He is also still looking more deeply into his identity and questioning what kind of a man, Maasai, and artist he really is.

Answering these queries with an exhibition that veritably explodes with colors and ‘abstract patterns’, Lemek is still dealing with the issue of an elusive identity which has yet to be fully revealed. Yet one can’t help feeling he has attained a deepened degree of self-awareness. It’s apparent in his dazzling use of color blended with a startling release of black abstract patterns.

“All of these works begin with a human figure and sometimes more than one,” says Lemek who began sketching and “drawing mostly cars” from an early age.

“Drawing was always very personal for me. And even now, I love sketching whenever I can,” he adds. In fact, the exhibition has a whole ‘mini-series’ of single semi-abstract figures of men in motion. All are apparently animated by some strong electrified force that gives each one a life all its own. And even his larger multicolored ‘abstract patterns’ begin with a figure which is subsequently overcoated with charcoal and pastels, blended not with a brush or palette knife but with an erasure!

All of Lemek’s paintings are on paper. All are drawn with charcoal, graphite, and pastels, apart from his latest piece which does away with charcoal altogether and is purely blended pastels. “I think that is the direction I am leaning towards,” he says.

Yet in the past, Lemek admits he had an aversion to color. “I was never big on ‘color theory’,” he says, recalling how he left CAC before he got bogged down with theory. But while researching his Maasai heritage, he became an admirer of the Maasai women and their colorful beadwork.

Then came a gift of high-quality French pastels from Rhodia Mann. The Kenya-born author and designer had inherited the box from her mother Erica who had used them while studying at the Beaux Art in Paris.

“Once I received the box, I went looking for a Kenyan artist who worked with pastels. I knew my mother [a trained architect] would love that idea. And that is how I found Lemek,” she says.

Lemek had indeed been working with pastels prior to meeting Rhodia. But before that he had only drawn in black.

Coming to use color by this circuitous path, Lemek has apparently reached an epiphany. His art has literally come alive at Red Hill. Coincidentally, several his recent paintings are currently on display in Paris alongside works by Onyis Martin and David Thuku. Lemek has also had shows in South Africa, Germany, Australia, and elsewhere in Kenya.