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TICAH’S Rika of June 2024 didn’t manage to turn water into wine during its week=long residency held at Goethe Institute.
But the collaboration between Goethe and TICAH did manage to involve more than two dozen artists from a wide range of artistic disciplines in the topic of water.
“It all started with the flood waters that were causing so much damage to many Kenyan communities,” TICAH’s Suzanne … told BD Life shortly before last Saturday’s culmination of a week-long workshop exploring both the positive and negative aspects of water. She and her TICAH colleague Eric Menya have been creating inter-disciplanary ‘rika’ residencies over the last two years. Some have managed to beautify the CBD with public art while others like their Water residency has managed to transform water into a performative art form involving everyone from classical and contemporary dancers to story tellers and rappers to videographers and landscape architects. There were also painters, printmakers and sculptors working in both stone and a big chunk of Ice brought in for the opening performance by Irene Wanjiru whose ice sculpture will last as long as the Sun’s heat doesn’t evaporate the ice and transform it back into fresh water again.
“Throughout the week, we had been discussing both the positive and negative features of water,” storyteller Mueni Lundi told BF Life. The mornings were devoted to discussions while the afternoons were the times the artists were putting the theory into practical illustrations of what water means and has meant in their lives.
For instance, Amber … … is a landscape architect whose specialty is Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese system of rules governing spatial arrangements aimed at protecting the free flowing, life-affirming energy of chi. So what she did was to create a beautiful circular garden filled with green plants which depend on water to grow. And within that garden she shared a traditional tea ceremony which also required water for making the tea. The garden was at the center of Goethe’s auditorium, around which so many water-related events that the public had a hard time keeping track of all the performances.
But one performance that got one of the highest ratings in terms of the public’s instant response was by Mueni in collaboration with rapper….. and the contemporary dancer,… … whose energy or chi was dazzling in its purity and free-flowing style of graceful movement as she flowed all around the crowded room.
The other dancer was the ballerina, D dd, who danced around layers of curtains that served as a watery backdrop conceived by videographer Linette … who had shot her filmed footage in Malindi just as the tide was coming in. it was a delicate combination that served as an elegant reminder of how constant is water as it comes and goes, causing either health or hazard depending on forces we are never quite certain we can trust.
There were a number of visual art exhibitions reflecting still more dimensions of all that water can do. Like Wallace Juma’s examination of what is stached away deep inside water droplets. His drops seemed to be examined under a microscopic lens enabling both the artist and the scientist to see what sorts of cells are featured in our drinking or bath water. Juma created a large diptych to give the full effect of his amoeba-filled water.
Then came Irene with her stone carvings, one of which is of a woman carrying a big pot of water since she has no running water in her home. The other woman looks desperate since she has no access to clean water and is suffering as a consequence.
Then TICAH managed to find one of the flood victims, Sammy …. Who is based at Mukuru Lunga Lunga, the so-called slum where Chabu Mwangi and Ngugi Waweru established Wajukuu Art Centre back in 2003 when Sammy was a small boy whose life was transformed by all he’d learned by growing up with Wajukuu.
“Wajukuu illustrated what water can do to a community,” Sammy said. “The floods have only strengthened our bonds as a community of artists since we have survived together through both the good times and the bad,” he continued.
But Saturday evening when the show was officially opened by the new CEO of Goethe, …. ….
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