MARY COLLIS' 'LIFTING THE DAY' REVIVES THE UPLIFT IN PAPERBACK

 LIFTING THE DAY: lockdown exhibition

By Mary Collis

Reviewed by Margaretta wa Gacheru

That first year of the COVID lockdown was a dreary affair. It was a struggle for many people just to wake up and find a good reason to get out of bed.

Simple things began to matter more, like bright colors splashed onto a virtual canvas and gardens filled with rainbow outbursts of flowers, grasses, and trees.

Kenyan artist Mary Collis responded to the lockdown in the only way she knew how, by painting and sharing her luminous landscapes on Facebook on a daily basis.

‘Lifting the Day’ was the name she gave to her daily dose of a single exquisite painting shared on social media.

It was a stroke of genius and generosity to both friend and stranger who hadn’t known her bright and brilliant paintings before. It didn’t matter to her how the public received them or even if they saw them. She was simply hopeful that by bringing out both old and new pieces, an online audience might feel the uplifting spirit that had inspired the work in the first place.

Mary put her paintings online for 244 marvelous days, and then finally decided to stop. Not that she had come to an end to her artistic expression or to the works she could have shared. But it was time.

It was a sad time for some of us who had experienced the daily delight of seeing her impressions of a Limuru Tea Plantation or her light studies of False Bay in Cape Town or her multiple perspectives of the riotous colors that filled her ‘Erica’s Garden’ series.

Fortunately, the book publisher Unicorn got wind of Mary’s online art exhibition and contacted the artist to see if she’d like her story and her art shared in a book?

‘Lifting the Day: lockdown exhibition’ was launched in Nairobi last Friday, November 26 to the delight of a ballroom-full of book lovers, family, and friends.

The room itself was filled with some of the artist’s most prized paintings, reflective of her dazzling use of color, light, and nature. Most of her artworks are of Kenyan settings, each one luminous with equatorial light.

Tourism hasn’t taken advantage of Mother Nature’s magnificent color schemes that she brings forth in many of Kenya’s most stunning gardens. Mary’s book should go some distance to draw attention to the natural beauty and eye-smacking realism found in gardens like the artist’s dear friend, former fashion designer, the late Erica Boswell.

Mary discovered abstract expressionism when she was still working as an interior decorator, and realized being a painter was a better fit for her professionally. Since then, she’s exhibited all over Kenya and overseas. Her works are collected in both private and public places internationally.

The global reach of her art hadn’t been known by the artist until she began receiving messages from happy owners of her art. Many of them sent images of paintings they’d either bought or been given by the artist over the years. Several of them appear in ‘Lifting the Day.’

One extra benefit of seeing Mary’s book, which contains all 244 artworks that she shared publicly in 2020, is reading her captions. Many of them describe the where, when, and why she painted what she did. She may even say who owns the painting and where it currently stays. Her intimate style of communication is conversational, as if she’s speaking to you, the viewer, like a good friend who deserves to know her wonderful anecdotal stories.

The other advantage of having the book is that the brightness and the beauty of Kenyan colors and light are right at one’s fingertips.

At the book launch, Mary made crystal clear how much she owed to her darling daughter, the award-winning photographer Mia. It was Mia who helped her assemble the minimum 244 high resolution images which were not conveniently located on one single art-filled flash disk. And it was her devoted spouse Alan who helped her with the proofreading of her texts, her storytelling about each painting that brings each picture even more mental light.

Like her favorite abstract expressionists, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollack, and Joan Mitchell, Mary values spontaneity and freedom. She’s also inspired by the beauty that she sees and has the gift of ability to express how that beauty makes her feel. It’s that gift which is contained in her newest version of ‘Lifting the Day.’

 

 

she called, after receiving the publisher’s message (having been spurred on by another locally-based artist, Sophie Walboeffe)

FUNDRAISING FOR COLD HOMELESS AFGHANS

                                     FUNDRAISING FOR HOMELESS AFGHANS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted November 10,2021)

Fundraising is a common feature of Kenyans’ everyday lives. We fundraise for weddings, funerals, children’s education, people’s pressing health issues including related travels abroad.

But mostly Kenyans fundraise for one another. In Louise Paterson’s case, hers is for helping homeless and hungry Afghans.

Having worked for many years in that part of the world with several humanitarian aid services, Paterson is well-aware of the acute needs of the Afghan people.

Unable to simply stand by and watch millions of people experience famine, homelessness, and the fateful return of the Taliban, the owner of Tribal Gallery says what makes Afghan people’s needs that much more acute is the fact that ‘winter is coming’.

“Millions don’t even have blankets, yet winters in Afghanistan can be brutal,” the Scottish mother of one tells BDLife.

Vowing to send every penny of funds raised next Saturday night, November 13^th to needy Afghans, Paterson’s Tribal Gallery will host an Afghan Supper where guests will be introduced to a delicious selection of authentic Afghan foods prepared by Chef Habib Rahman from Kabul.

The meal itself will be a sit-down affair, so there will be a limited number of sympathizers to the Afghan cause. But their meal won’t come cheap. For Sh7000, there will be introduced to Burani Banjan, Kabuli Pulao, a Vegetarian/Vegan Pulao finished with the most delectably fresh Baklava, the thinly layered pastry desert filled with chopped nuts and honey.

The Burani Banjan is a kind of appetizer made with oven-baked aubergine, organic tomatoes, and fresh cilantro served with homemade yogurt drizzled with pomegranate pearls. It’s served with handmade bolanee (Afghan flatbread stuffed with mashed potato).

The main course (for meat eaters) is the Kabuli Pulao, an ethereal mix of lamb and rice, redolent with sweet, exotic spices.  The vegan Pulao replaces the lamb with vegetables infused with spices and dried fruits.

There will also be a silent auction that night which is bound to raise substantial funds for the Afghans cause. One donor gave four nights for four people in Lamu at the elegant boutique hotel, Bush Princess. Another donated two nights at the Olepangi Farm in Timau while the ‘celebrity barber’, Abbas Noori Abbood donated two stylish men’s haircuts. And several artists have donated works, including Ahmed Abushariaa, El Tayeb Dawelbeit, and Mariantoimetta Peru.

Finally, Tribal Gallery itself will be donating two handwoven rugs to the cause, one from Morocco, the other from Afghanistan. Practically all the carpets, artifacts, furniture, sculptures, and home décor that Paterson exhibits and sells in Tribal Gallery have been hand-selected by herself or her brother.

“My brother and I travel the globe looking for beautiful [hand-made] treasures. I literally have felt like a treasure hunter,” says the former nurse turned country director for the American Refugee Committee (ARC).

“I was country director as well as regional coordinator for both Pakistan and Afghanistan,” she adds. Her job mainly involved emergency response efforts to events like the massive earthquake that hit southeastern Pakistan and the instability in Afghanistan itself caused by the Taliban.

Prior to working for ARC, Paterson had several jobs with various United Nations Agencies. She’s worked for everyone from WHO and UNDP to UNICEF, often in the most unstable places in the world. Having chosen the career of nursing with the double motive of both service and the desire to travel. Paterson knew that her skills as a nurse would enable her to find work almost anywhere.

That is how she started off nursing, initially in Glasgow, but then went to work in Palestine, both to the West Bank and east Jerusalem where she nursed children paralyzed by snipers’ bullets. That tragic experience didn’t deter her from moving to other war-torn places, first to Somalia where her career path shifted slightly. She went to work in a military hospital but now she was in charge of other nurses. She did similar work when she moved to Pakistan, only now her role grew into emergency response, working all around that region including Kashmir.

Working tirelessly for ten years, assisting migrants, refugees and internally displaced people, Paterson finally decided in 2014 she was ready for a change. She moved to Kenya the same year, having been briefly based in Nairobi while working between Mogadishu and Mombasa.

Setting up Tribal Gallery , her travels have enabled her to display handmade home décor from all over the world including China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand as well as Japan, Morocco, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, and Cameroon, Sudan, and of course, Afghanistan.

 

 

JOAN OTIENO AND WASANII WAREMBO FIGHT POLLUTION WITH PLASTIC FASHION

                   FIGHTING PLASTIC POLLUTION WITH PLASTIC FASHION

By Margaretta wa Gacheru

Who said only poor people live in the slums?

Joan Otieno, 36, stays in Ngomongo village, deep in the bowels of Korogocho slum where she has been working with young Kenyan women to create recycled fashions that have taken her all over the world.

Busy setting up a photo-shoot for an upcoming fashion show in Paris when she spoke to BD this week, Joan has been working with an international team of photographers, hair stylists, production designers, and a fashion journalist to create a captivating photo preview ofan African ‘trash fashion’ show.

“The French team also brought one professional model with them for the shoot, but the rest of the models are girls from Wasanii Warembo,” says Joan, referring to the NGO that she started back in 2018 when she was still based at Kariobangi North.

“We had to move in 2019 and that’s when we set up our studio and gallery in Ngomongo,” says Joan whose following amounts to over 25 girls and young women whose ages range from 6 up to 25.

By then, Joan had already trained her core team of young models, all of whom came from informal settlements in Nairobi’s Eastlands, and all of whom were learning survival skills, especially in recycling plastics into attractive fashions, from Joan.

The shows started slowly. The first one was at the Michael Joseph Centre where Joan tested the waters by wearing an original design. She had created a trash gown made from debris collected and cleaned from the Dandora dumpsite. It was a smash success.

That was right around the same time that she had begun attracting the attention of young girl school dropouts who were eager to learn new skills. Joan was also keen to see young women not fall into errant ways like prostitution or drug addiction.

Initially, it was just a handful of young women who joined Joan on her weekly trips to the Dandora dump where she’d collect plastics for use in recycling everything from jewelry, bags, shoes, and hats, to rugs, paintings, fashion, and even place mats.

By the time Joan and her Warembo Wasanii women were invited to hold fashion shows everywhere from UNEP and USIU to Alliance Francaise, the girls were wearing matching ensembles, (namely dresses, shoes, handbags, jewelry, and hats), all made out of the same refurbished plastic packets.

The marvel of their displays was not just that Joan had taught the girls to design and cut out new clothes like professional seamstresses.

It was also that they had been able to go deep into garbage dumps with Joan to collect specific plastic packaging. This enabled them to design fashions that were either all pink and white, made out of ‘Always’ sanitary pad covers, or red and white, made out of ‘Trust’ condoms, or blue, green or pink, made from Omo plastic packets.

Joan even taught them all how to hand-stitch all those packages together into plastic ‘fabrics’ which they then transformed into environmental statements that have had global appeal ever since.

For instance, Joan has been invited to share her recycling skills in Adelaide, Australia and Stockholm, Sweden where she has shown the versatility of working artistically with plastic trash.

Locally, she’s been invited up to Tafaria Castle several times to create whole windows and walls out of broken bottles and other bits of garbage. And just prior to the COVID lockdown she spent time in Lamu, working with orphans at the Anidan children’s centre.

“We had a fashion show at the Peponi Hotel in which the children modeled dresses that they’d created during the two weeks I was with them at Anidan,” Joan says.

So while she may not be rich monetarily, Joan’s become a trailblazer in solving the planet’s monumental problem of plastic pollution one plastic gown at a time.

BALLET IS BACK AT NATIONAL THEATRE WITH THE NUTCRACKER

 BRINGING BALLET BACK ON STAGE WITH THE NUTCRACKER

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 22 November 2021)

Having performed in The Nutcracker from the time she was two, Cooper Rust says the production of this classical ballet is a time-honored tradition that’s been practiced annually at Christmas time in Kenya since 2015 when her Dance Centre Kenya (DCK) first staged it at Kenya’s National Theatre.

“It’s not only staged in Kenya at Christmas time,” the DCK founder tells BDLife. “It’s performed all over the world since it’s a story about a little girl who receives a [fantastical] Christmas toy,” she adds.

This year Cooper, 36, won’t actually be in the Ballet. But she has choreographed and directed the show which opens December 3^rd at the National Theatre.

“I’ll perform in Cinderella in February,” she says. “I’ll play the wicked step-mother,” she adds with a twinkle in her eye.

Explaining that her choreography varies every year, depending on her dancers, many of whom will be new, Cooper says that her students have been rehearsing and dancing throughout the lockdown.

“We are really excited about coming back on stage, since some of us didn’t know if it would ever happen again,” she says, recalling the last time DCK staged a ballet [Romeo and Juliet] was in February 2019.

But her dancers never doubted they would come back. That is why they rehearsed non-stop with this former prima ballerina instructor who’s become like a mother to many of them.

In fact, eleven of the dancers that are in this year’s Nutcracker actually live with Cooper 80 percent of the year. “All eleven have families who they stay with part of the year,” she explains. But she knew that if these dancers were going to fulfill their full potential, they would need to work hard. And she was prepared to work with them.

But as all eleven come from informal settlements, either Kibera or Kuwinda, Cooper says the biggest headache was transport. That was the first consideration for having her most promising young dancers come to live, dance, and study with her.

It all began with the 15-year-old Joel Kioko from Kuwinda, a slum burrowed away deep inside Karen. Joel had come to Dance Centre Kenya as a scholarship student after Cooper had spotted his tremendous potential when she was still teaching dance to under-served kids in the slums. But she quickly realized that in order to ensure he fulfill his full capacity and also be able to travel for further dance training that she was prepared to organize for him, she would need to tutor him academically as well as dance-wise. And that couldn’t happen unless he came to stay and work with her, which is what he did.

Today, Joel just graduated from the English National Ballet School and now has a full-time job working professionally with one of the most acclaimed dance companies in America, the Joffrey Ballet.

Two other of Cooper’s former ‘family members’, Francis Waweru and Pamela Atieno, have also gone on for further studies, Waweru to study lighting design in Oklahoma, in the US, and Atieno to South Carolina where she’s continuing her studies in ballet.

And soon, the fourth housemate, the lovely Lavender Orisaa, 15, will soon be following Joel’s footsteps in travelling to the UK on a full scholarship to study at the English National Ballet School.

Lavender will costar in the Nutcracker as the Dew Drop Fairy. Other members of the Cooper family household who are in the ballet are George Okoth playing the Snow Cavalier, Shamick Otieno as the Sugar Plum Cavalier, and Mithelle.. and Elsy together play the leaders of the rat pack.

“Then there’s the six boys from Kibera [ages 12-14] who will comprise the rat pack in the ballet,” Cooper adds.

Noting that she only missed four days of rehearsals during the lockdown, Cooper says she did spend a couple of weeks in the States, fundraising for her children’s school fees. “Besides transportation, I realized that education was also a problem for my dancers. That’s why we had to fundraise for the young ones to go to ISK,” she adds.

In addition to her housemates, Cooper’s cast is international. The 13-year-old boy who plays the actual nutcracker, Aske Ballan, is from Denmark. Clara is played by a girl from Bulgaria, Jana Landolt, the Sugar Plum Fairy is French, Oceane Deloge, and the Snow Queen is played by the British girl Anamika Govani.

This weekend, on Sunday at 1pm, DCK will stage a dress rehearsal of The Nutcracker for hundreds of children from informal settlements. At 4pm there will be a preview for adults.

But the official opening is Friday, December 3^rd at Kenya National Theatre.

margaretta.gacheru@gmail.com

WAJUKUU, AN OASIS OF ART IN A DESERT OF DIRT AND DEBRIS

                               WAJUKUU TO REPRESENT KENYAN ART AT DOCUMENTA

                        Shabu Mwangi, Ngugi Waweru, and Kim at the new Wajukuu Artists Collective Studio

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted November 21, 2021)

Wajukuu Artists Collective inaugurated their brand-new arts studio last Monday with a week-long workshop for fellow artists from their Mukuru Lunga Lunga community and beyond.

“We’ve been building the centre since last June,” says Wajukuu founder-artist Shabu Mwangi. “Previously, it had been a sugar cane plantation,” he adds, noting that was some time back.

Shabu’s colleague, Ngugi Waweru, explains that construction of the studio is not yet complete. “When we are done, the studio will be a double-decker so artists will be able to work both upstairs and downstairs,” he adds.

Ever since 2007 when Shabu launched the original Wajukuu Art Centre (which is just around the corner from the new studio), the arts have played an important role in this ever-changing informal settlement.

“The centre is where we have all our special projects. Here [meaning the new studio] is a space that’s exclusively reserved for artists,” Shabu tells Weekender.

It’s the centre that’s attracted global appreciation of Wajukuu for its being a kind of oasis of art in a desert of dirt, dust, debris, and dilapidated mabati housing. For the centre has not only offered art classes for kids in the neighborhood. It’s offered carpentry and woodworking for slightly older children. And it even screens documentary films which are educational and uplifting to all ages and backgrounds.

Wajukuu has also inspired many young [mostly] men, starting with Ngugi and Joseph Weche, to take up the challenge of developing their own artistic talents. In this regard, it’s Shabu who has been a role model for these emerging artists. “He’s shown us how anything is possible if we’re committed to making it happen,” says Ngugi.

Shabu’s commitment to art started early on, even before he completed primary school at Rubin Centre in Lunga Lunga.

“Art was still on the syllabus when I went through primary. And since Rubin Centre was run by [Catholic] Brothers, there was greater interest expressed in art,” he says.

Shabu’s circumstances were slightly different from those of Ngugi and Weche since they both went to Saint Elizabeth’s primary where art was not taught.

Shabu already could feel he had a calling, to be an artist, so when Sister Marie invited him to join her ‘art college’, he could hardly resist.

“I didn’t learn much in Sr Mary‘s school. In fact, a few months after I joined, she moved me into managing the college’s art and craft centre,’ he says.

The items that he curated and sold there were what Shabu describes as basically tourist art. It was mainly Maasai-related and wildlife. Nonetheless, he was getting exposed to new ideas every day.

The idea of finding a studio space to work in the slum was the first challenge that Shabu, Ngugi and Weche wanted to solve. That quickly shifted to seeking space to build a community-based art centre. “It was a process that evolved over a couple of years,” Shabu says.

                                    Ngugi Waweru is also learning new skills at Wajukuu Artists Collective

In fact, it was the neighborhood children who played their part in the shift from an artists’ studio to an art centre. “They kept coming around and trying to draw and paint like us,” says Ngugi. Eventually, the art classes grew out of the children’s desire to be creative and to express themselves the way the big boys did.

Meanwhile, Shabu’s artworks were getting noticed by several Nairobi galleries, and he began having shows at both One Off and Circle Art Galleries.

“I had a lot to say in my art,” he says, recalling the way his own social status as an outsider was reflected in his painterly concerns for the oppressed, the migrants, and refugees as well as those with psychological issues.

Today, Shabu says some of Wajukuu’s members now have the means to move out of the slum if they wish. “But we don’t leave. We want to remain to uplift our community with art.”

That sense of loyalty is partly why art lovers have been so keen to support Shabu and the Wajukuu centre. “We want to stay here and help build our community, especially the youth,” says Shabu who feels art can indeed move mountains. His life experience is sufficient testimony to that fact.

Wajukuu has even appealed to the organizers of what’s been billed as the biggest art event in Europe called ‘Documenta’ which Shabu and Ngugi will be attending and presenting artworks they’re creating right now.

“We’re in the process of creating installations, a video and three separate books,” says Ngugi.

Their entire contribution to the event needs to be completed by early next year. “We’re confident we will make the deadline,” Shabu says.

                                                 Right outside Wajukuu Artists Collective is Mukuru Lungu Lunga

WAKIO THE STORYTELLER AT EU-AU ARTS COLLAB

                              ART EXCHANGE LINKS AFRICA AND EUROPE

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (18.11.21)

Collaboration between the African Union and the European Union have been quietly underway since 2000 when the two regional bodies agreed that mutual exchange could be beneficial to both parties.

They have worked together on projects in various sectors ever since, including everything from business, peace and security to education, digitalization, and good governance. They have even been busy in the area of arts, sports, and culture, setting up something called the Art X Change (AXC) aimed at creating connections and increasing skills among young creatives.

“The Art X Change is actually a project that grew out of the AU-EU Youth Cooperation Hub,” says Emma Macharia, a spokeswoman for AXC and the International Committee for the Development of Peoples (CISP).

“So far it’s a consortium of just five partners from five countries, Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, Italy, and Sweden, but the project is growing,” she adds, “especially in East Africa.”

Evidence of what AXC has already achieved could be seen this past week during a day-long conference on ‘Connecting Creative Youth in Africa and Europe’ held at Pride Inn Azure Hotel in Westlands.

Organized by the Italian Institute of Culture (IIC) and CISP together with Kenya’s Ministry of Sports, Culture, and Heritage and UNESCO, the Conference shed a spotlight first on several successful case studies that AXC has already participated in. The goal in every case was to support new ways to mobilize creative ideas and cultural activities that would also advance sustainable development.

“Training is one of the big elements in our program,” says Rachel Kessi, the founder-director of the Tanzanian contemporary dance troupe, MUDA Africa.

Kessi explained in a live Zoom call to the conference from Dar es Salaam, that her dance group has been collaborating with dancers from Rwanda and Uganda in the areas of performance and capacity building. She also focused on building a regional body of dancers that can be self-sustaining.

“This is why we got UNESCO involved in the project.” Emma says. “We are also concerned about institution-building as a key factor in sustainable development which is where UNESCO comes in,” she adds.

Two other cultural projects highlighted at the Conference that involved the concepts of cultural identity, sustainable development, and institution-building were the Mogadishu National Museum and the Awjama Cultural Centre.

Dr Osman Gedow Amir, director of the museum shared both high hopes and tragic circumstances of the museum. He has detailed strategic plans for the re-development the museum which is currently a shell of an institution. But due to the instability of his country, his plans are on hold. Nonetheless, AXC is still prepared to support his goal to reestablish the National Museum.

Fardowsa Jama is better off insofar as she started her Somali Awjama Cultural Centre in Eastleigh, Nairobi not Mogadishu. She has a plan to re-establish the Centre in the war-torn Somali capital. But in the interim, she has been able to build up her centre and train Somali youth in multiple aspects of Somali culture and heritage.

One aspect of training that Fardowsa has used to share traditional folktales, riddles, and songs from Somali culture is storytelling. It’s a technique of performance that AXC also supports. Indeed, a high point of the conference was when the Kenyan actor Wakio Nzenge told her story of ‘The Message’.

Having just completed a short course in Storytelling supported by AXC, Wakio told a spellbinding tale of a girl wanting to share news of her good grades with an old friend. Her journey to reach him was harrowing. What was worse was the man had been in jail for 10 years, and had clearly changed dramatically since they’d last met. Their encounter was brief but it had a profound effect on the child who almost forgot the purpose of her mission to visit. It was to tell her father about his little girl’s progress in school.

Wakio’s performance was poignant and bitter sweet. It also illustrated the value of AXC’s concern for cultural exchange and training. “We want to see young people trained so well that when they go out to share their skills, they can do it as professionals,” says Nancy Mwaizaka, UNESCO’s culture officer.

The one Kenyan partner of AXC is the GoDown Arts Centre, which regularly runs an Entrepreneurship Training course for Kenyan creatives. Unfortunately, they had no representation at the conference. Nonetheless, IIC’s new Director Elena Gallenca noted that The GoDown is a valuable partner of AXC. “Many of our exchange activities take place at the GoDown,” she said.

KEKE MATLABE: AWARD-WINNING SOUTH AFRICAN ACTOR MOVES KITFEST AUDIENCE TO TEARS

 SOUTH AFRICAN ACTRESS MOVED KITFEST AUDIENCE TO TEARS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 20 November 2021)

Out of all the performances I was able to see during the ten-day Kenya International Theatre Festival (KITFEST) at Kenya Cultural Centre, none was more breath-taking or more brutally honest than the one staged by South African actor Kekeletso Matlabe

‘Chronicles of a Whore’ was ‘Keke’s one woman show based on the true story of Glenda, a sex worker who she’d met while researching her final theatrical project to present to her mentors at the world-renowned Market Theatre Lab in Johannesburg.

“Glenda’s story still makes me weep,” said Keke during the Q&A that followed her heart-wrenching performance at Kenya National Theatre.

“Normally, I don’t stay after a performance of this piece since it takes so much out of me emotionally, I need time alone to unwind,” she confessed to BDLife.

She made an exception last Thursday night since her audience clamored to learn more about how she’d shaped and scripted Glenda’s tragic story, a classic and cruel case of sexual violence.

Glenda had been raped at age 7 and then again at age 9, each time by different uncles. Her life had essentially gone down hill from there. But Keke managed to gain Glenda’s trust, first by speaking to her in her mother tongue, Tswana, and then spending time listening to all the graphic and painful details of her life with empathy and nonjudgmental understanding.

This wouldn’t be the first time Keke had scripted and staged a story about women. Growing up in a small town in the Free State, she had performed in many school and church plays. But it was one called ‘Sisterhood’ about four best friends, that got her a three-year scholarship at the Market Theatre Lab in Johannesburg.

Coming from a family of educators and church men, they had been pleased when she got a degree in accounting, but rejected the idea of her having a career in acting.

“I told them I’m happiest when I’m on stage. I told them I’m a storyteller and that is who I am,” she said, and off she went to Johannesburg.

Following those three glorious years at the Market Theatre Lab, being mentored by some of South Africa’s greatest performers, Keke stayed on for seven more years performing at the Market Theatre as well as at the Soweto Theatre and the Johannesburg Civic Theatre.

“My accounting skills also came in handy when I worked the front-of-house, taking tickets and keeping track of membership and sales,” she said.

Currently, back in her home town in the Free State, Keke has a number of gigs going at once. Her main one is as artistic director of the Bokamoso Art Centre which was started by one of the original stars in the South African stage performance of The Lion King, Sello Molefi. “Sello is still performing Lion King, but he’s now based in Australia. He essentially left the Centre to me,” Keke says.

It hasn’t been easy, especially as her village isn’t a hotbed of contemporary culture. Nonetheless, through a program that came out of the Market Theatre, supported by the International Arts Organization, ASSTEJ, Keke became a certified ‘facilitator’ who travels to schools and facilitates arts programs both for students, (grades four [ms1] through six) as well as for their teachers.

“We cover everything from dance, drama, and music to visual arts, film, video, and fundraising,” adds Keke who just recently returned from a six-month film training course in Johannesburg.

“Having been trained as an actor, it was fascinating to learn more about directing,” says Keke who has already begun writing scripts for film.

She barely completed that course when it was time to come to Kenya for KITFEST. “I had been invited by Kevin [Kimani, the LITFEST founding father] in 2019 but it was too late for me make it that year,” she said. “Then came COVID in 2020, but I was determined to make it this year,” she adds.

The problem was her country’s Ministry of Sports, Arts, and Culture. It cancelled her air ticket at the last minute, so Keke was left stranded. What to do?

Fortunately, she was able to conduct several poetry fundraisers, performing her own poems and inviting other spoken-word poets to share at open mic sessions at her Centre. Finally, her family chipped in to help her buy a round-trip ticket for R12, 600.

It was a challenge for her to make here. But as the other South Africa company, Intokozo Theatre Productions couldn’t get visas in time, it was only Keke who represented a thriving theatre scene currently underway in her country. And she did it very well!

 

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LIZA'S BACK, NOT AS A DANCER BUT AS A PAINTER OF DANCE

      LIZA'S COMING BACK TO HER FIRST LOVE, PAINTING

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 20 November 2021)

For many years, Liza MacKay was best known for being Nairobi’s leading modern dancer, instructor, and choreographer. She taught dance at Alliance Francaise and choreographed musicals for Phoenix Players like ‘Sweet Charity’, ‘Joseph and his Amazing Technicolored Dreamcoat’ and even Shakespeare’s ‘Taming of the Shrew.’

But back when she’d completed her A-levels at Kenya High, Liza didn’t go study theatre or dance. She went to perfect her skills as a painter at St. Martin’s School of Art and Sussex University in the UK.

That’s how she came around to teaching art at ISK for a quarter century up until a few years back. It’s also what brought her back to being not just an instructor but a practitioner of painting.

Nonetheless, her upcoming exhibition at Red Hill Gallery will be all about the career that brought her tremendous joy for many years, and that was dance.

Having taken ballet lessons as a child, she came back to studying dance while still in art school. That led to her dancing professionally with UK companies like ‘Moving Vision’ and the ‘Dance Theatre Commune’.

But when she got a call from one dance instructor in Nairobi, suggesting Liza come home to take up her teaching job at Alliance Francaise, Liza confessed she’d been missing Kenya terribly and quickly flew back to teach dance and to choreograph shows for James Falkland and others.

She also performed in everything from Brecht’s ‘Mother Courage’ to Baudelaire’s poetry, accompanied by Job Seda aka Ayub Ghada, and Alliance Francaise’s former director, the late Pierre Comte.

But since she stopped teaching both painting and dance, Liza has come back to fine art.

‘Choreography’ is what she’s entitled an exquisite collection of figurative paintings of a dynamic dancer in motion. Mind you, painting provides a two-dimensional perspective but dance is all about movement of human bodies in 3D.

Liza has her own unique techniques for conveying the vitality of the dancer, who in this case is her former colleague, Adam Chanjo, who came to teach dance to deaf students at ISK.

“We’ve remained good friends, so when I thought of painting a subject close to my heart, I thought of dance. I wanted this show to make the connection between these two [artistic] aspects of my life,” Liza tells BDLife as she puts finishing touches on paintings that she’s produced during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Combining photography, painting, and even photoshop, Liza’s one-woman show is all about one dancer who we encounter, first in a portrait that she painted of him, then on a beach at the Kenya Coast on a sunny day when the water is crystal blue and the sky is shimmering with heat and ethereal blue light.

And finally, her most recent version of the dancer is most ambitious. She initially took a series of photographs of Adam in specific poses that she wanted him to hold. Then she photoshopped them to create a variety of effects, all aimed to emphasize both the dynamism of the dance and the graceful elegance of the dancer.

When her exhibition opens early next year, Liza has arranged for Adam to come and dance while she tells a bit more about his story as well as about her art.

Liza will be adding more paintings to the collection that I saw tucked away in her home. But thus far, it’s her portrait of Adam that I feel is the best reflection of her skill as a first-class portrait painter who manages to convey the essential life force of her subject with sensitivity and clarity.

Her studies of mobility and grace of the dancer are also interesting; the paintings of Adam on the beach are presented as if his form is a beautiful still life, bronze and sun-baked in the sand.

Her choice to slice several poses of the dancer to create a semblance of cinematic movement doesn’t quite work for me. My eye is more inclined to look for the original dancer and try to piece his body back together again. Instead, Liza’s intent is to convey a feeling of dynamic movement that’s accelerated by her slicing and reshaping of body parts.

But whether her dancer is slightly distorted or presented in elongated ballet-like forms, it’s the elegant anatomical accuracy of Liza’s presentation that makes her paintings feel almost super-realistic.

This will be the first one-woman exhibition that Liza has had in several decades. Clearly, it is long overdue. We hope it will signal more to come from this multi-talented Kenyan woman.

 

CYRUS KABIRU: GIVING TRASH A SECOND CHANCE

CYRUS HAS GIVEN TRASH A SECOND CHANCE FOR YEARS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (published in Top 40 under 40 Nov.19, 2021)

Cyrus Kabiru was in Venice, Italy last week when two of his sculptures were selling at the Art Auction East Africa for more than KSh1.2 million.

“It was important that my work be in the auction, but not important that I be there,” said the 36-year-old globe-trotting Kenyan artist.

What was also important to this self-taught sculptor and painter was that the funds raised would go a long way to building up the Art Orodha Centre that he’d established in 2019 outside Nairobi to provide space for young artists to work, learn, share ideas, exhibit their art, and sell it at the same time.

Cyrus had been invited to Italy to speak to students from several Italian universities about his favorite topic, “Giving trash a second chance”. The subject as well as the speaker have attracted so much interest that he’s been invited with his art, to speak or hold workshops everywhere from Cape Town, Milan, Dubai, and Amsterdam to Hong Kong, Harlem, Hollywood, and Washington, DC.

For a young man who was born and raised just next to the Dandora dump in Korogocho, Cyrus’s journey was fueled by his artistry and his desire to be best at whatever he did. Knowing at a very early age that art was what he wanted to do with his life, the only art materials he could afford were foraged from the city dump.

“People ask me if I was inspired by Picasso or Warhol. I tell them I never heard of them until I left Kenya,” says Cyrus whose C-Stunner eyewear was inspired by his father’s glasses, specks his dad never allowed him to try on.

“So I decided to create specks of my own,” says the artist whose whimsical C-Stunners have been written up everywhere from New York Times to CNN to Art in America.

Cyrus may not be the first African artist to recycle urban trash and transform it into treasured items, including everything from jewelry to sculptures to monumental tapestries. But his message of seeing trash from a fresh perspective, in terms of how it can be resurrected into something dynamic, useful, or even beautiful, is reinforced with his quirky art.

For years, Cyrus was based at Kuona Trust where he initially worked with bottle-tops, wires, clippers, and plyers to create life-sized creatures. He also drew caricatures and cartoons which were initially what took him to the Netherlands for his first exhibition overseas.

But with the success of his C-Stunners, he moved out in order to begin building the art centre which eventually became Art Orodha (or Trush Art). “I want younger artists to benefit from what I have learned,” says Cyrus who keeps a low profile here at home but is closely observed by art critics overseas.

The fact that his Blue Mamba bicycle sculpture sold for over Sh820,000 and his Radio sold for over Sh410,000 shows that even locally, Cyrus’s art is appreciated by those who understand works like his can only accrue in value over time. And Cyrus’s time is now.

GERMAN PHOTOGRAPHER CAPTURES MEMORABLE MOMENTS IN REGION

             UNFORGETTABLE MEMORIES CAPTURED IN PHOTOGRAPHS

                                                                                  Christine by Sonke C. Weiss

By Margaretta wa Gacheru

German photographer, writer, journalist, and filmmaker Sonke C. Weiss has spent the past 25 years traveling and working in Africa. In all that time, his camera has been close at hand to capture memorable moments. Many of those images have earned him international awards.

But they also reflect what the photographer calls “unforgettable memories”, a few of which he’s currently exhibiting at Red Hill Gallery in a show he entitled “All that I can’t leave behind.”

His exhibition opened last Sunday, November 14^th and runs until January 9^th next year. Its title suggests he has a deep attachment to the places, people, and memories each image represents. It also implies that for all the decades he has been in Africa, working everywhere from Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, South Africa, and Kenya, he is still something of a stranger in the region however rich his experience has been here.

The exhibition itself is honed down from his huge collection of photos taken since the 1990s when he first came to Africa for an “adventure” and for “kicks’.

“I’d yearned since childhood for the kind of adventure I’d found in my Tintin comic books,” he wrote in his artist’s statement. “I wanted to see the world. I wanted [especially] to see Africa.”

Getting a job as a communications officer with the humanitarian aid NGO, World Vision, enabled him to work in several trouble-spots in the region, including northern Uganda.

“We had a rehabilitation centre in Gulu for child soldiers who’d been rescued from the Lord’s Resistance Army,” he recalls. One of those child soldiers named Christine is in the exhibition. Hers is one of the three collage portraits that Weiss created to compliment the 30 photos in the show.

“I also wrote a book on child soldiers, focused in Christine’s life story,” he says. “She was able to accompany me on a book tour in Germany which was quite successful,” he adds.

What he calls his favorite photo in the exhibition was also shot in Gulu. It’s of a woman street-food vender at the end of her working day. She’s packing up her cooking pots and tea kettles. But Weiss says what appeals to him about the shot is the way her pose looks as graceful as that of a ballerina.

There are other elements of the image that are striking: the texture and weather-worn color of the tall wall in the photograph; the balance of simple elements hanging from the wall; and the way the photograph itself looks almost like a hyper-realist painting.

The one other photo from Uganda that grabs one’s attention is another portrait, only this one is of a business woman surrounded by huge gunia (hessian) sacks filled with charcoal. Having a personal concern for trees and the acute problem of deforestation, I find the image painful in its implications. But it is eloquent in its ability to visually narrate a complicated story about trees and Ugandans’ need for energy irrespective of the long-term implications of destroying Africa’s rainforests.

All of the images in Weiss’s exhibition have that narrative quality. He has two photographs taken in Tanzania during the pandemic and hung almost as if they were a diptych. In one, the young woman wears a mask; in the other the young mask-less man looks embarrassed with his hand over his mouth.

                                                                            Charcoal Mama 

“You remember how the former leader of Tanzania opposed masks, but things changed with the change of leadership,” Weiss says.

But it’s on the gallery wall where Weiss, with the Gallery’s owner-curator Hellmuth Rossler-Musch, hung over 20 of the photographer’s smaller images that one will see how intimately he got to know the non-touristic life of African peoples. For one thing, there isn’t one zebra, elephant, or lion in the whole show. Only African people living in families, often in informal settlements, and reflecting less on the poverty of the people and more on the aesthetic elements of what he sees.

Critics of Weiss’s exhibition might see it as a white voyeur’s perspective on poverty in the Africa. And yet, the photographer has initially gone to all those countries on a mission to assist. In the process, he has witnessed people’s everyday lives, like the lady street vender and the former child soldier.

Some of Weiss’s photos that couldn’t find room in this show were shot in Kibera where he was covering a COVID-awareness campaign designed by artists from the Maasai Mbili collective.

“They painted walls that said, BEWARE COVID, and the community took note,” he says, clearly impressed with the M2 initiative.

B2B

                    BACK TO BASICS’ COMEBACK WITH DISTURBING DRAMA

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 15 November 2021)

Back to Basics has got to be one of the most edgy and experimental theatre companies in Kenya. That is why we had such high expectations of their return to the stage earlier this month. Needless to say, some B2B fans were stymied to find the Jain Bhavan Temple where ‘Breathe III’ was happening, but the public persevered and fans came out in record numbers.

As with the performances of Breathe I and Breathe II, Mbeki Mwalimu assembled a series of quirky true Kenyan stories, collected and narrated by journalist Jackson Biko, to create Breathe III. Mbeki both curated the stories and directed the show.

Presented as a series of animated monologues, B3 generally focused on relationships, mostly unsatisfactory ones between women and men.

                                           Nick Ndeda hugged by Gilbert Lukalia in previous B2B production.

Yet one of the most engaging tales of the five who are traveling by train from Nairobi to Mombasa, is about a guy struggling to stay alive in the slum. Brio, according to Nick Ndeda, didn’t have a problem with women. His primary concern was surviving in light of the poverty and violence he incurred on a daily basis in Kibera. Ndeda, like the other four storytellers, went into graphic detail about gritty struggles that made their stories so incredible.

What made Ndeda’s Brio such a compelling character is not just Biko’s depiction of the risky business of Brio’s not getting raped, robbed, or killed every day in the slum. It’s the way Ndeda grabbed his character and got physical with his portrayal of this boy who eventually would become a prize-winning boxer.

It's the one happy ending in the show. The rest are bitter-sweet affairs, except in the end when Nick and Martin Githinji stand up to try to defend men in light of the tales told by three powerful women actors who have deep grievances with men, starting with Mary Mwikali.

                               Mbeki Mwalimu in previous B2B production with Mary Mwikali and Wakio Nzenge

Mwikali gives us some of the lighter moments of the show, especially when she asserts her own agency in admitting she’d been shamelessly addicted to sex for three years! She tells her story to total strangers who, like us, are fully swept up in her charismatic portrayal of a woman daring to overthrow her frustrations with men by taking charge of her relationships and thus her life. Mwikali’s capacity for making us laugh and cry with her character is one of the gifts of Breathe 3.  

Unfortunately, Shazmeen Bank’s character has been wounded so deeply by her man that she can only express herself as a victim of her spouse’s alcoholism, womanizing, and psychological abuse. Unlike Mwikali’s character, she’s wholly oppressed by her spouse, thus making her piece the most painful in the show. Her latent rage comes pouring out as the train passengers slept. Apparently, hers is an internal monologue drafted in a letter she had written to the guy. Ultimately, her reality is that she’s stuck in a rut like so many married wives, seething with silent rage, who suffer in silence and can’t find their way out of their victimhood.

In yet another contrast, Wakio Ndenge’s character is a fighter whom we initially meet, not in the train but in front of the main stage curtain, musing on her miseries. The train has evaporated from the scene, so this is the most surreal episode. Domestic violence is again a theme running through her tale, but it’s preceded by her thinking about an abortion she has had and the feelings of guilt and low self-esteem that followed that decision. It isn’t quite clear why her man shows up at that moment, but she and Ndeda get into both a verbal and a physical brawl that looks deadly. Fortunately, she survives but the message is plain: women have major problems with men.

Yet once we get back to the train, it’s as if nothing had happened the whole night. All three women disembark while only Ndeda and Martin Githinji are left to a quasi-rap rendition of what makes a man. They’re made to look slightly absurd as a defense of the male, especially after all we have heard. But the tragicomic tone of their dialogue tops off a tale that paints an unhappy portrait of not just spousal relations. We also detect a broader, unsettled undercurrent in Kenyan society. It’s sadly polluted with violence, injustice, and impunity which has seeped into the deeper dimensions of people’s personal lives.

Breathe 3 was a painfully disturbing show to watch but it’s also a provocative one, poignantly told by a team of some of Nairobi’s most talented actors.

 

 

ART AUCTION EAST AFRICA GARNERED SH23.1 MILLION

 HYBRID ART AUCTION EARNS MILLIONS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru

The 9^th Art Auction East Africa garnered a whopping Sh23.1 million last Tuesday night at the new Radisson Blu Arboretum Hotel. That was in spite of COVID keeping a few friends of the Auction away from the ‘real time’ event.

But not even COVID could keep serious bidders from buying E.S Tingatinga’s Untitled ‘Rhino’ for Sh3.1698 million, Geoffrey Mukasa’s Untitled ‘Blue Beauties’ for Sh2.632 million, Salah El Mur’s “Iris Flower’ for Sh1.566 million, or even having a bidding ‘war’ over Ehoodi Kichapi’s ‘Man against City’, the winner paying Sh1.5262 million for the oil on canvas Basquiat-like work created by Kichapi in 2008.

Other notable sales included ‘’A Kiss’, the second Tingatinga painting created by the late Tanzanian artist which went for Sh1.0566 million, Peterson Kamwathi’s ‘Monument II’ for Sh798,320 and Cyrus Kabiru’s ‘Blue Mamba’ bicycle sculpture that sold for Sh821,800 which will be donated to Kabiru’s Art Orodha Art Centre. Cyrus’s was one of two donations made by artists together with Circle Art Gallery. The other one was by the Ethiopian artist, Tamrat Gezahegne whose painting, ‘Adorned Body’ sold for Sh493,080, all of which will be donated to the African Arts Trust. And lastly, the other donated item that got auctioned off last night was a rare bottle of 26-year-old Glenfiddich whiskey which went for Sh50,000.

In fact, this year’s art auction was a hybrid affair, meaning bidders were not only able to vie for their favorite art pieces in person with paddle in hand. They could also call in by phone, although that method has mostly been used by international bidders. They could even bid online through the popular art auction platform, Invaluable.

“That’s what we did last October,” Danda Jaroljmek told BDLIFE a day before the auction. “It was the first time we put the auction online and it worked very well,” added the founder-curator and executive director of both Circle Art and the Art Auction East Africa.

The October auction was an experiment of sorts, given the lockdown was still on. But it proved that art lovers and prospective buyers didn’t need to be on hand to physically witness Kenyan auctioneer Chilson Wamoja handle all the lots of East African art (60 last Tuesday night) to take part in it from the comfort of their own living room or bedroom.

Like so many businesses that had found COVID to be both a curse and a blessing in disguise, Danda and her team had to learn lessons and new ways of working during the pandemic.

“We were heading in that direction [of online auctioning] anyway, having seen how all the major auction houses, from Bonham’s to Sotheby’s, have been holding their auctions online for quite some time,” she observed.

Nonetheless, October was a revelation that opened eyes to the immense possibilities of conducting last Tuesday night’s hybrid auction.

“We now have more bids coming in from all over the world,” said Chilson who’s been conducting the auction for the last six or seven years. “We’ve always had international bidders, but the numbers have increased in the last couple of years,” he added.

Putting the Art Auction East Africa on the Invaluable online platform is one factor that’s widened global awareness of East African art. It also allowed anyone who’d registered with Invaluable to watch the entire auction last Tuesday and place their bids online in ‘real time’.

“We’ll have Don [Handa, Circle Art’s gallery manager] at the website watching the bids come up at Invaluable,” explained Danda. “He’s the one who’ll pass the online bids onto Chilson who will also have to watch the phone lines as well as the bidders in the room [at Radisson Blu].”

But Chilson didn’t complain. He merely mused on the probability that if they’d gone online with Invaluable sooner, so many more art lovers might have switched onto East African art.

Danda also said she’d seen a steady increase of interest in East African art since the auction took off back in 2013. That interest has increasingly come from all over the world.

“Let’s see, we’ve heard from Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa as well as from Switzerland, France, Germany, UK, US, and Australia, and also Qatar and Dubai,” Danda recounted.

When asked by BDLife what she thought had caused the exponential increase of interest in regional art and the auction, she said there were many factors. One was signing on with Invaluable since many serious art collectors and investors are aware of website and follow it closely. “We also signed on with Artsy [another leading art news online platform],” she added

Another factor, she said was social media, and the other big issue was the global trend of increasing interest in African art.

“There is little doubt that [art lovers] are following global trends in contemporary art,” she said. “Previously, it was Chinese art, then came Indian art, and now, there’s new interest in African art. It’s definitely had an impact on our work,” she added.

According to the local art collector and investor Tony Wainaina, Africa has gained greater attention in the global art world because it’s accurately seen as “the last frontier” for exploring contemporary art.

Noting that not a week goes by without calls coming in from new voices expressing interest in East African art, Danda added that art fairs have also had an impact in raising awareness that East African art exists.

In the last few years, she [often with her assistant Don Handa] has attended a score of art fairs, raising the profile of contemporary East African art in the process. “Right now, we have a presence in art fairs in Paris and Dubai. And we just finished another one in London where works by Dickson Otieno, Shabu Mwangi, Tahir Karmali, Jackie Karuti as well as several Ugandans and Sudanese all did well,” she said, noting that all of Otieno’s wire-weave sculptures were sold.

The only problem with Tuesday night’s art auction was that the room at Radisson Blu Arboretum Hotel wasn’t nearly as big as the Upper Hill RB ballroom which had been shut down months ago due to the pandemic.

“The room could only hold 29 of the 60 lots that can be found in the auction’s [elegant full-color] catalogue,” said Don Handa who had an ‘army’ of young Kenyan volunteers to work with on Tuesday night, assisting as ushers and caretakers of the art.

“We knew in advance that the room size would be comparatively small, which is why we’d encouraged everyone who was interested to come see the [auction] preview at the gallery,” Danda added.

But then, everyone who signed up with Invaluable was able to see all of the artworks as Chilson conducts the bidding “in real time.” And even those who attended the event in person, were able to see all 60 lots flashed on three white walls as he auctioned off carefully curated works of both paintings and sculptures.

SECONDARY MARKET

Circle Art’s AAEA catalogues is full of detailed information about the art and the artist. It also mentions who has the provenance or prior ownership of a work and whether it has come from a private collection or directly from the artist him or herself. Danda said nearly two-thirds of the works auctioned Tuesday night came as part of the secondary market.

“Technically, most art auctions only include works from the secondary market,” says Danda, who from the beginning has included original works coming from the artists themselves. Among them were several well-known local artists, including Sane Wadu, Cyrus Kabiru, Edward Njenga, Kaafiri Kariuki, Tabitha wa Thuku. Ehoodi Kichapi’s ‘Man against City’ came to Circle as part of the secondary. But either way, his painting surpassed all expectation in sales and elicited one of several dramatic bidding battles between those physically at the auction and those who were either online or on the phone.

But for Danda, including art that comes from the artist is meant to nurture local talents as well as to cultivate a secondary market. “One way to promote the idea of art as a valuable investment is to cultivate a dynamic secondary market where collectors can come sell their art and make a profit,” she explained.

For Tony Wainaina, more nurturing of the artists is needed to develop the local art scene further. “We need more art dealers, agents, and first-class galleries,” he notes.

But his other concern is the fact that there are many moneyed Kenyans who could easily be investing in East African art who don’t. ‘These are people who still hang calendars on their walls is if they are works of art,” he said in a phone interview shortly before the auction.

“They need to learn there are other things to invest in besides land and shares,” said Wainaina.

That may be the case, but Danda says she has seen many more Africans, including Kenyans, buy art now than in the past. One reason for this is the internet and social media which has roused more interest among both local and more Pan-African audiences.

Tony concedes that young Kenyans who have been abroad and gotten exposed to the international art world are more likely to attend an art auction and fill their walls at home with African art. But the older, more moneyed elites still need to be awakened to what they are missing.

Like Danda, he noted that international auction houses have done their bit to rouse public interest in contemporary African art. However, he added that Bonham’s has been the best at conducting auctions focused on East African art while Sotheby’s is still obsessed with South African and West African art.

Still, both houses took the lead in putting African art auctions online and proving there’s indeed a market for the art. Last Tuesday, Circle’s art auction further proved that interest in East African art is growing by leaps and bounds. It’s also proved how quickly its organizers can adapt to the new circumstances and do so effectively.