One of the best reasons for attending the Luminescence exhibition on any Saturday last month was it would mean you were going to see the Organic Farmers Market in Karen where the pop-up show was happening. And there at the market, you would not only find scads of fresh fruits and vegetable trucked in straight from local farms where no chemical pesticides had been used. You would also find casual clothes, cafes, and all sorts of other organic food items like home-made jams, juices, chocolates, cookies, and even coffee beans that are normally sent overseas and not available locally.
The other really good reason for getting to Luminescence was
that the show’s curator, Zihan Herr, had brought together an eclectic array of painters,
most of whom are leading lights among contemporary [East] African artists. They
include everyone from Dr Anne Mwiti, Shabu Mwangi (who has his own solo exhibition
coming up later this month), Michael Musyoka, Lemek Sompoika, and Boniface
Maina who also has a fascinating solo exhibition currently up at Red Hill
Gallery that shouldn’t be missed. Boni’s exhibitions are always filled with surprises
since he is ever-experimenting with new ideas and techniques. His ‘Delicate Densities’
is no exception.
Zihan had set just one criterion for artists’ participation
in the exhibition. It was that their works should reflect the luminescence or
radiant light that her leading concept implied. For that she called on specific
painters like Wycliffe Opondo whose untitled painting of a sunrise in Kibera is
one she knew well and wanted in her pop-up. “He shipped the painting from
Kisumu so it could be in this exhibition,” Zihan told BD Life at the
show’s last Saturday.
(My hope is that the exhibition, which is dedicated as a
Tribute to the life and artistry of the late Yony Waite, be extended another
month. But Zihan says it’s unlikely. I can still hope).
Zihan also had a preference for the chiaroscuro style of
painting used by Jimmy Kithaka. It’s a technique expressed in his ‘Lonesome
traveler’ and ‘A cat’s open window in my room’. But there is nothing
chiaroscuro about the paintings of Jamie Vaulkhard, a Kenya-born UK-based
artist who is far more widely known overseas than he is here in Kenya. But Zihan
managed to caught up with him, and he shared two of his sun-lit paintings for this
exhibition.
There were several so-called ‘emerging artists’ in Luminescence,
one of whom was Zephaniah Lukamba whose ‘Matoke Street’ is another example of
night life illumined by a single light source, that source is a streetlamp
whose light is met by leaves of palm trees that seem to be welcoming the light
like a friend.
Then there is Mumbi Muturi-Muli whose abstract watercolors are
evocative and share a fascination for horizontal horizons with her senior, Dr Anne
Mwiti whose first Horizon work is one that earned her the prestigious Global
Citizens award in London, making her the first Kenyan and first African to ever
win the award.
In contrast to the women’s fixation on the horizontal comes
Emmaus Kimani’s photograph entitled ‘My Balcony’ which features vertical lines between
which one could see a bright glow coming from below. Meanwhile, one of Zihan’s
good friends, Andrea Bohnstedt, had been attending local artists’ exhibitions
for many years, but only recently decided to attend a woodcut workshop to try
her hand at etching and wood cut printmaking to see if she could play a more
active part in Kenya’s burgeoning art scene. She had only been at it a few months
before she dared to share her prints with her friend who was so impressed with Andrea’s
etchings that she insisted they be in the show. They are miniature untitled woodcut
prints that reveal a thoughtful sense of balance in their composition and their
being carved in delicate fine lines.
But let me not forget two of the most important artists featured
in the exhibition. One is the show’s curator, Zihan, who is not only a painter
and curator, but also an art instructor, art critic, feature writer, and editor
as well. Just one of her impressionist paintings was in the show, but that was
fitting since she made space for four or five of Yony’s last works made
available by the executor of her ‘estate,’ Linda Benvenuti who is also Yony’s
sister-in-law. These were the crowning works in a show filled with tiny gems of
creativity and originality, like shabu mwangi’s ‘On Balance’ and Michael Musyoka’s
Untitled Portrait of the Backside of an Anonymous Man.
Finally, the unsung artist who played an integral part in
ensuring Luninescence had gallery space at the Market, was Zihan’s husband Tom
Herr. He’s a professional carpenter who literally constructed the whole gallery
out of bamboo. He was also the one who disassembled the space until Zihan’s
next showcase later this year.
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