UNDER 30 IS PRIME TIME FOR KENYAN ARTISTS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (September 3,2022)

One Off Gallery just came up with an ingenious way of generating an artistic buzz while drawing upon the creative resources of both young and older working artists.

Calling on them all to take part in a group exhibition entitled simply ‘Under 30’, gallerists Carol Lees and her assistant Kui Ogonga didn’t just elicit responses from artists in their twenties as one might expect. They also invited more established artists who were over 30 to share works they’d created back when they were actually that age and just beginning to cultivate artistic qualities that would lead to their becoming significant figures in the Kenyan art scene right now.

This is a perfect time to meet the ‘youngsters’, more than 20 young men and women, who brought a wide-ranging variety of works to One Off. Just one among them is a sculptor, Atieno Sachy whose metal ‘Grasshopper’, ‘Samburu’, and ‘Grasshopper’ confirm that she’s a young woman to watch. Fortunately, there are more young female artists in ‘Under 30’ to watch as well.  

Meanwhile, the diversity of genre is impressive among the so-called emerging artists. They are doing everything from ballpoint pen portraits (‘Shy I’ by Warren Osongo) to hyper-realism (Laban Korer’s ‘Happiness’) to surrealism (Dennis Otieno’s ‘Colors’).

Anthony Okari’s ‘Building Bridges, Bridging the Gaps’ has a special appeal as the visual representation of the title’s concept is clear-cut. There’s a delicacy in the dangling of colorful diamond-shaped characters who seem to be quietly communicating with other lines of thread for the good of the greater whole.

Then too, you’ve got Derrick Kinyeki doing digital collage while Sam Osiemo has painted such a cozy-looking ‘Side Chair’, one feels like sitting right down in it with a really good book and reading throughout the night. Cyprian Rasto just turned 21, yet he knew early on that art was the line he was meant to pursue. That conviction comes through in his pieces at One Off. Katie Simpson has a similar sense of conviction as can be seen in her ‘Girl in Yellow Turban’ and her ‘House of Color’. And Taabu Munyoki was also true to her word when she painted her masterpiece, ‘Man is mortal’. But I confess, it gave me a dark feeling, rather like the one I felt when I began to look closely at Hieronymus Bosch’s ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’. Both works reflect on the myriad mistakes human beings make in their lives.

In contrast, Iona McCreathe’s drawings feel liberating. They combine fashion and art, and they reflect her ongoing development of fashion as art and art as fashion.

But while we applaud the emergence of new talents, it’s exciting to see what older, more established artists like Richard Kimathi was doing back in 1998, what Dennis Muraguri was working on in 2007, and what Wambui Collymore was doing back in 2013. All eight of the widely recognized artists were feeling their way in those earlier times. All have taken their time, evolved, and developed over periods that were not always easy. And even now, no one is saying that ‘success’ is a breeze for Kenyan creatives. But it’s impressive to see early works by not only Kimathi, Muraguri, and Collymore, but also by Peter Ngugi, Anthony Okello, Thom Ogonga, and Elias Mungor’a who actually is still under 30. But as he made such a splash when he first came down from Nyeri in his early 20s a few years back, he readily acquired the ‘ranking’ of ‘success’ and ‘established’.

What’s beautiful about a show like ‘Under 30’ which has included just a few of a myriad of Kenyan success stories is first that it confirms that contemporary Kenyan art didn’t just start yesterday. Artists have been doing it for decades, whether the wider world knew about it or not.

What’s also interesting is that someone like Richard Kimathi can see how his early works are being valued by gallerists at half a million. Yet back in the day when folks could’ve been buying Kenyan art but did not, only a few people appreciated that good art was bound to accrue in value over time. This is true of all the ‘over 30’ artists at One Off. It’s also one of the reasons why there is currently a growing global interest to contemporary African art among global art collectors.

So, while both the Loft and the Stables feature fascinating aspects of contemporary Kenyan art, both reflect the fact that the visual arts are alive and well today.