By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted April 11, 2022)
This year’s
Nairobi Design Week offered a dazzling display of young Kenyans’ energy,
versatility, passion, and imagination. It happened at Kazuri Bead Factory,
which turned out to be the perfect venue for visitors to wander through over 30
diverse exhibits leisurely.
One also saw a surprising array of small-scale
businesses that illustrated both entrepreneurial smarts and creativity. Take
for instance, Tiffany Ngigi’s ‘Knot Donuts’, which have sold like hot cakes
ever since she put them on Instagram and Facebook. With a single knotted donut
going for sh200 and a box of five for Sh800, it wasn’t just the novelty of the
knot that proved most attractive to foodies hungry at all hours of day and
night. It wasn’t even the 24-hour delivery service that Tiffany, 19, promised.
“Tiffany
cares about quality,” says Sylvia Ngigi. “Plus the toppings are terribly
popular,” she adds as she shows BDLife the billboard: Oreo Vanilla, Oreo
Crumble (with both white and milk Chocolate), and Vanilla original.
Tiffany is
just one of scores of young people who came to display everything from jewelry
made from recycled materials, first-class handicrafts made by ‘urban refugees’,
and clothes, some of which were original Kenyan fashions, some mitumba brought
as part of a cash-free Thrift Shop started by Switcharoo.org and the Acacia
Collective of artists.
“The idea is
for people to swap clothes rather than sell them,” says Kip Ketter from Acacia
who explains one must come with a piece of their own donatable clothing so they
can exchange it for any of the shirts, dresses, pants, jeans, coats, shorts,
and sweaters they have on display.
“Plus, every
day at 1pm during the Design weekend, we’ll have conversations about the ideas
behind our shop, namely a circular economy and the notions of ‘reduce [waste],
reuse, repurpose’,” adds Hephzibah Kisia.
The big
challenge of this design week is that so much is happening at once, it’s not
easy to choose where to stop and engage all these enthusiastic youth, most of
whom are under 30.
But we are
advised by the Design Week’s founder, Adrian Jankowiak, that our next stop
should be the Play Centre since lots is happening inside there.
And sure
enough, he’s correct. Most is related to AR, Augmented Reality. That’s the
realm where you put on special goggles only to find yourself in an unfathomable
world created by the clever AR specialist who shows you how to navigate into
and through it with your fingers and thumbs.
The first AR
project I visited had been designed by James Kamau. It was meant to give an
overview of the entire Design Week’s activities, including all the artworks,
fashion, digital games, and food delights. I decided it was better to see it
all firsthand.
Then came
Brian Njenga’s Heritage project which aims to create 3D replicas of all of
Kenya’s 32,000 lost artifacts, using AI (artificial intelligence), and onsite
photography. “My problem is our [pre-colonial] culture is scattered in museums
all over the world, and usually it’s in storage, so access is an issue,” says
Njenga. But he’s already got 10 replicas drawn from German museums with
assistance from the Shiff Collective and Goethe Institute.
But the most
exciting exhibition I had time to see at Design Week was Naitiemu’s multi-media
project, Enkang’Ang’. Named after the all-Maasai women’s community in
Laikipia county, their village has already gained global notoriety for the
strength of these women’s struggle to successfully break away from the Maasai
status quo and set up their own self-sustaining society.
Being a
Maasai herself, Naitiemu had a special affinity for the project she named Enkang’Ang’
which means ‘Our Home’. “The idea of the project was to discover and document
Maasai culture, but we also wanted to re-imagine it, especially in light of
this community,” says Naitiemu who’s a mechanical engineer by training but a
painter and performing artist by passion.
Having
designed a concept paper, she managed to obtain a grant from the Soul of Nature
Foundation. The grant enabled her to select a team of highly qualified Kenyan
women to help her document the lives of the women living together in Twale
Tenebo village.
At Design
Week, Enkang’Ang’ occupied a larger corner of the Play Centre with
beautiful still photographs by Sarah Kadesa, several short videos, including
music videos and one of a performance by Naitiemu and her dance team responding
joyfully to Enkang’Ang’.
I couldn’t
visit every exhibit this year, but it was thrilling to see Kenyan youth
leap-frogging into the future, bringing the rest of us along behind.
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