Usually I like to go to see the Venice Biennale long after its late spring opening, any time from September to November. This year was different because several African artists whose work I own were going to be included either in the Biennale Pavilions or in side events. I wanted to meet up with the artists and share the moment with them.

I showed up for the preview week and while the streets of Venice were not yet overrun with tourists, the vaporettos (water buses) that ferry us back and forth to the Guardini and the Arsenale were jammed packed  with art enthusiasts from all over the world. People were queuing up to enter the various pavilions in the Guardini. Patience and persistence and a sense of humor were one’s best assets!

The South African pavilion was worth the wait! Two excellent videos installations graced its small allocated space. Mohau Modisakeng’s black and white three channel video installation Passage was particularly gripping and aesthetically beautiful.

I became the witness of three characters, each distinctive by the tailored clothes they wore, and each one lying in a slowly sinking rowing boat struggling with the rising water. Modisakeng makes reference to past transatlantic slavery and comments on current displacements of people created by political and economic upheaval. While the restraint of the performance conveys a dignity to the characters, who never try to escape and allows the viewer not to feel overwhelmed, the watching does take you down underwater leaving one out of breadth to say the least.

Candice Breitz’s seven channel installation Love Story was just as absorbing and disturbing. First I was watching two well-known actors, Julianne Moore and Alec Baldwin, alternate impersonating two refugees on an oversized screen. I was captivated by their performance in part because of the harrowing stories they were recounting but also because they are two Hollywood actors that I am familiar with. Breitz made it easy. It was just like going to the movies. However it is a performance. Then in a room behind on 6 smaller screens I saw the real refugees tell their true story that I could only hear if I took the step of picking up the earphones and of listening to their voices. Breitz makes a point here of having star actors overshadow the ‘real” refugees highlighting the role of the media structures in telling the refugee story and “overshadowing” the personal stories.

After a couple of days I set off to trek through the web of streets of Venice in search of the other African Pavilions that were scattered across the lagoon. On top of my list was to attend the opening of the Kenya Pavilion whose location had been in constant flux prior to its opening. At first it was to be in Dorsudoro and its location was included in the map provided by the Biennale team. I then received an email from Lavinia Calva of ArtLabAfrica the night before the opening informing me that the venue had changed location and was now far in the Guidecca at the Palladio school. The process had been a real challenge she said :”it’s been a real struggle. They lost two places for lack of funding. The artists have been brilliant and sorted everything out themselves with zero support!”. However because of the last minute change the Kenya Pavilion is not listed on the Biennale map.

Just hearing that made me determined to be there. After two days of being spoon fed art I was ready to work harder to encounter it. I walked across the Dorsudoro, feeling that I was walking away from a Venice that makes me look back and romanticize history. I was also shaking off this thing that happens to me when I see too much art all at once, this feeling that I am consuming art, and turning into someone that seeks to be entertained or inspired and reassured about humanity. I reached the Zattere vaporetto station where I picked up the waterbus that crosses the Canale della Guidecca and dropped me off at the Palanca stop. I was now in a different Venice, one where the working class Venitiens live. It was around four o’clock and school was out. I passed mothers pushing strollers with their young children zipping past them on their scooters; here was the laundrymat, the convenience store. I walked deep into the Guidecca and I knew that I was getting close when I saw Simon Njami holding forth at an outdoor table. I finally arrived in front of the Palladio school, a partially empty building , and noticed a small yellow sign with “Another Country, Kenyan Pavillion” written on it. I climbed to the third floor where the work of 5 Kenyan artists selected by curator Jimmy Ogonga occupies each an empty classroom and followed the sound of familiar voices.

Peterson Kamwathi was being interviewed by the Zucca Project team that provided last minute funding and saved the pavilion from a certain demise. Soon walked in Beatrice Wanjiku, another Kenyan artist whose work has been included in The European Cultural Centre exhibition and a good friend of Peterson. They shared the financial and logistical challenge it had been for all of them, and the thrill of being here. Peterson had no idea of the space where his work was going to be hung and had to travel with his artwork on his flight from Nairobi. He felt  now that it was  up he could expand its scale. I concurred. His current subject is one of migration and scaling it up would be quite effective. But overall it was the thrill to be finally here that dominated. The government failed to come up with the funds but the artists made it happen anyway. I am moved by their persistence and commitment! Beatrice is housed on the mainland and has a 1h30 commute in both directions! Nothing is taken for granted here.

Next door hung Paul Onditi’s’ richly layered paintings capturing a global world order collapsing into chaos. Onditi’s manages to make beautiful a nightmarish scenario, capturing the terrifying seductiveness of chaos.

In another classroom working in direct dialogue with the classroom’s architecture sculptor Arlene Wandera created a sculpture “ On the ladder” using a repurposed ladder that she stood in the middle of the room with tiny figures of men standing on a beam positioned across the ladder and another hanging from a wire. In the dichotomy of scale to my eyes the ladder became the towering framework, and a metaphor for the established structures of power that exist within which the tiny figures must navigate. Unfortunately the piece seemed a bit lost in the space and I felt her idea was not flushed out enough. The pavilion includes also works by Mwangi Hutter and Richard Kimathi.

I was soon off : Nigeria was having its first pavilion ever and it was a distance away. It was quite a long waterbus ride before I saw the Nigerian pavilion nestled against the church of San Stae. The show is titled How about Now. First it was the past that greeted me as I walked directly into Victor Ehikhamenor’s enveloping installation A Biography of the Forgotten, walls draped with canvas painted with geometric patterns and small Benin bronze heads (replica of real large size ones that were taking from Benin) and mirrors hanging from the ceiling.

In the words of the artist Ehikhamenor: ‘The symbolism of the mirror is two-fold: on the one hand, it was one of the objects the white man exchanged for African art, commodities, and human slaves. It also serves as a metaphor for self-reflection – a selfie if you like- a way of introspection.’

On the upper floor the sculptural scale shifted to life size with the work of Peju Alatise Flying Girls who brings attention to the girl-child and her vulnerability in Nigeria. Not only have many girls been abducted by Boko Haram and sold as sex slaves, but Nigerian society itself allows young girls to be enslaved and married while being underage. Alatise bases her work on a story she wrote about a little Yoruba girl called Sim who is nine year old and is rented out as a domestic servant in Lagos. Here the artist offers us a flight of fancy, an escapist vision, something that the little girl imagined to manage her anguish. Eight life size sculptures of young girls sprouting wings are set in a circle amidst flying birds and butterflies. Overhead, in a sound piece, girls’ voices chatting away brought a smile to my face reminding me so well of the delight of childhood and the poignancy of what was at stake.

Finally the video recording of the work of dancer and choreographer Qudus Onikeku was particularly powerful and moving. With a focus on the present and the now as a way to encounter the past, through performance, and movement that often felt self generated the performers including Qudus enact extremely poignant scenes. I felt in my own body the violence that played itself out. More effective than words it conveyed a historical trauma deeply embedded in the collective unconsciousness of the Yoruba people.

‘ Body memory is something that has always been a fascination to me. The appeal results from the capacity of the body to be a storehouse and to keep memories we are not aware of until it manifests in consciousness. For me, it’s also a way of looking at ourselves, as Africans, as black people, and how the body has been the thing that has passed through the tunnel of what we might refer to as history.’ Qudus Onikeku..

I was sorry to have missed his live performance.

The Ivory Coast Pavilion was set in the grand Palazzo Dolfin. I met up with Joana Choumali, a photographer from the Ivory Coast who I had met in Lagos a couple of years ago. I found myself quite engrossed with her new body of work that was included in the Pavilion. In this work, Choumali delicately embroiders with colorful threads her photographs that she took in two hemispheres, the North and the South. By cutting out a figure from the photo taking in Africa and repositioning it in another location she speaks of migrations and highlights the longing of those who wish to leave but also the vacancies and the loss that it engenders locally.

Jems Roberts Koko Bi’s sculpture in wood was particularly effective and poignant. He was present on the beach in Grand BAssam near Abidjan where a terrorist attack took place in March , 2013.

At the Zimbabwe Pavilion I liked Admire Kamudzengerere 900 Post-It self-portraits that he did to remember his recently deceased father. Speaking about this body of work that was shown in New York at the Catinca Tabacaru Gallery he explains:” It was a slow process of calming down by looking into the mirror and drawing one [portrait] after another. It was my way of trying to understand who this man is and was and our shared connection.” Not one self-portrait is alike. Quite an amazing feat and mourning process! Knowing why he did this made me look at each post-it with a different eye and emotion. This was not narcissism but a quest for the departed loved one.

I stopped at the Future Generation Art prize organized by the PinchukArtCentre. South African artist Dineo Seshee Bopape was the winner of the 4^th edition and Phoebe Boswell (Kenya/ UK) had received Special Prize.

Bopape’s installation consisted of an earth sculpture made of black local soil acting as a platform for organic and geological objects. I was dying to touch everything. I thought of the natural wealth of our planet or in particular South Africa with its soil rich in minerals including gold before it became altered by man and transformed into objects. Installed in a richly wooden paneled room with high ceilings, bookcases and century old brass chandeliers the juxtaposition of materials could not have been more thought provocative.

Other works were from

Ibrahim Mahama

Kemang Wa Lehulere

Njdeka Akunyili Crosby

Beatrice Wanjiku at Personal Structures – Open Borders.

Abdoulaye Konate at the Arsenale.

The presence of new pavilions was a welcome development. However I felt overall there could have been more artists from Africa and its diaspora included in the Guardini and the Arsenale. There is excellent work out there that deserves to be shown. There was a Diaspora Pavilion but  too often the attention was given to the message and not to the actual form of the artworks which I found disappointing. The issue of migration is obviously at the forefront of the works on display but I missed the personal impetus that is necessary to make a work convincing and memorable.

This superb tabernacle was an eloquent illustration of how Africa’s wealth ( mineral, and human) has played an important part in Western civilization economic achievements. Today is a time  for  Africa to focus on the richness of its continent  and design its economic and culturel future shifting its gaze away from the West or as we say today the North.

Gor Soudan’s approach is essentially conceptual. He greeted me in his new small studio not too far from the Circle Art Agency. He came to art by way of his passion for philosophy. Translating an idea, concept or observation into material form and letting the process of making  and the properties of the materials (wire, ink, metal) intuitively guide him are two of the guiding principles of his working process.

I first encountered Gor’s work in 2013 at the 1:54 Fair in London at the ArtLabAfrica’s booth. He was making figurative sculpture out of “protest wire”: fragments of the human form that felt deeply poetic in their incompleteness and nest-like forms. Gor favors working with materials he finds in his surroundings and at that time he was working out of a space in Kibera, a large slum on the edge of Nairobi and was recycling this wire which was left over from burned car tyres set afire during earlier riots.

His work has been well received and he is now able to afford his own space, which while  small by Western standard, is a real treat for Gor. He tells me how he used to weave the wire while sitting in a chair with the wire resting on his knees.

Equating this weaving process to drawing in space his subsequent investigations into drawing on paper were a logical move for him.

Currently he is particularly drawn to the Arabic wood carvings that one finds in Lamu and he is incorporating some of their patterns in his recent drawings.

I later went on to pay a visit to Michael Soi who has a studio in the GoDown art center situated in an abandoned industrial complex.

Known for his biting critique of China’s increasing presence in Kenya – his work is mostly satirical and critiques Kenya’s social, economic and political contemporary situation – he is currently pointing the finger at the rampant sex industry in Nairobi.

Deeply aware at the corruption crippling Kenya at all levels and seeing his art as an agent of change he deliberately makes his work explicit and easy to read. He wants his audience to get what he is saying. He paints cartoon-like scenes with flat and bright colors. His work resonates with a younger audience in Nairobi and as Danda says “ He brings a young dynamic Kenyan crowd because they get what he is doing. It’s social commentary, it is cheaky.” Next door to his studio is his shop where he sells totes that bear his signature style. A successful business it provides him with a safety net: “ I paint what I want to paint. I can do this because I have a safety net!”

Other artists to follow are:

Paul Ondoti

Jackie Karuti

Mimi Cherono Ng’OK

Muchiri Njenga

African contemporary art is gaining serious traction in Europe – lots of galleries, exhibitions, and an art fair were scheduled to show work from African artists this fall in London, and another art fair in November in Paris. That is really exciting. However considering the fickleness of the Western contemporary art scene – it is like love affairs, they heat up and eventually cool off – it is of great importance for the long term that the focus be on developing African local contemporary art markets and here I mean artists, art spaces, galleries, collectors and obviously schools. South Africa has a vibrant art scene, West Africa is also very dynamic with two major events this October in Lagos ( Lagos Photo Festival and ArtxLAgos). East Africa has trailed behind markedly. However there are signs that this is changing.

At the Armory fair in New York City in March the focus was Africa and I was pleased to see an Ethiopian gallery, Addis Fine Art included as well as a Kenyan gallery, Circle Art Agency which showed a video by artist Ato Malinda, whose work I had noticed prior to the fair and found appealing.

She has just received the Smithsonian African Awards for 2016!

I started chatting with Danda Jaroljmek, head of Circle and we decided that I should stop by the next time I was in Nairobi and she would tell me about the exciting developments happening in the Nairobi art scene. That was welcomed news!

I remember how around nine years ago during my first visit to Joburg I had run into Simon Njami and he had commented on the lack of creative energy emanating from Nairobi. Not that there was no art being made there, but it stayed traditional.

However I had had an inkling that things were changing. Two years in a row now ARTLab Africa, a Kenyan art space had shown at 1: 54, in London and New York, works from several Kenyan artists who were doing interesting work. I had purchased a couple of works and was keen on meeting the artists. One of them, Beatrice Wanjiku, was painting such raw emotion in her canvases that I wanted to hear her talk about her artistic journey. I was planning my yearly bush walk in Kenya that was to take place during the summer so I scheduled to stay a few more days in Nairobi, something that I generally avoid doing. I would spend those days meeting with several artists, and talking at length with some core players who revealed the history and the current state of the art scene. My research was not all inclusive but it was a good start.

Road works!

Getting around Nairobi is not an easy feat as it is plagued by terrible traffic jams. Timing meetings and showing up on time is a challenge and finding the place is another one. Most of the art places and artists studios are not in downtown Nairobi but more on the edges of the city and don’t have street frontage.

Danda Jaroljimek of Circle Art was out of town for a couple days so my first visit was to the small cultural platform ARTLabAfrica run by Lavinia Calza. I had made arrangements to meet at the organization’s premises two artists: Beatrice Wanjiku and David Thuku. Tucked away in a small office in back of a one story building I found Nadine Hugg, Lavinia’s assistant waiting for me .

Beatrice Wanjiku soon walked in. A woman of medium height, her hair pulled back in a soft bun, her sunny disposition was soon apparent despite the disturbing content and imagery of her work as a painter. Very vivacious, quick to smile, verbally effusive and intense she spoke of her work during the next hour with beautiful honesty, conviction, and passion.

Beatrice’s work is visceral, uncompromising, deeply personal reflecting her challenges – loss of her single parent and the cultural costs of choosing, as a woman, to be an artist in Kenya – but also her courage. Finding her voice has been an arduous process and now that she has found it she is not concerned whether you like her work or not.

She manipulates her paint with an expert hand: it stretches, tears, pulls, hide, reveals, drips. The interview provided important insight into her personal story, her artistic methodology and commitment. To read the interview click to the link.

An hour into the interview David Thuku strolled in with few large sheets of thick paper under his arm and no folder to my amazement! A member of what they call there – the fourth generation of artists – David is a relative newcomer to the art scene. While earning a living painting theatre backdrops and murals he and two other artists founded the BrushTu art collective in the Buru-Buru neighborhood of East Nairobi, which offers residencies and also sells art. More recently he has been focusing much more on his own work and has completed a residency at Kuona Trust where he still keeps a studio. He is developing his own particular style, which has been very well received. .

His work is done on paper of varying colors which he at times paints (treats is his word for this) with color, cuts and tears deliberately according to a carefully thought out message that he wants to convey. Every intervention on the paper is purposeful and he sees it as part of a process of extracting, revealing, digging out what lies underneath what at first one sees. He speaks of his working process in physical terms but it is also a mental process whereby he gets to understand “things” better.

David cut-outs are comments on the social, cultural and political situation in Kenya. Being a naturally reserved person he poses questions more than answers them for now while calling on the viewer to contend with the issues at hand.

Thuku tutors young artists from the Kenya Empowerment Program, The Buru-Buru and Kenyatta Universities as well as teaching art students under the Langalanga Scholars Association project.

Exhausted and hungry after those two hours or more discussing their work, Nadine, Beatrice, David and I grabbed a bite around the corner at a restaurant in the local mall. By the way security is pretty tight and you get checked as well as your car before you can get into the mall.

David and I would go to Kuona Trust in the afternoon. There will be a post on Kuona and the workshop system that has prevailed in Nairobi followed by an interview with Danda Jaroljmek from Circle Art Agency where she talks about galleries in Narobi. In particular she speaks of the art auction she started in 2013. It makes for a good read so be on the look out  for both posts!

Beatrice Wanjiku as a female artist breaks away from Kenyan traditional  expectations, in her art and in her life.

The Quintessence of Loneliness III, 2016

Beatrice Wanjiku was born in the Ngong Hills near Nairobi in 1978. She did her art training at the Nairobi’s Buruburu Institute of Fine Arts from which she graduated in 2000. She now lives in Nairobi, Kenya.

Her canvases and works on paper waver between figuration and abstraction and have a rawness that is provocative. Always starting from her personal experience she delves in the human psyche, revealing its struggles as it contends with loss, social dictates and political instability.   Beatrice’s work is visceral, uncompromising, and reflects her personal challenges. Finding her voice has been an arduous process and now that she has found it she is unconcerned with others’ opinion of her work. Indeed sometimes her imagery is hard to look at. She manipulates her paint with an expert hand. The paint stretches, pulls, hides, conceals, reveals, and drips. During my visit to Nairobi this August I had the pleasure of interviewing her. The interview provided important insight into her personal story, her artistic methodology, and her commitment.

State of Existence , Immortality Series, mix media, includes X-rays.

Disquieting Muses, Straight Jacket Series, 2016

Isabel Wilcox: When did you know you liked making art?

Beatrice Wanjiku: I would doodle on walls; my mother used to be very irritated about it. I always had the need to understand how things work. I studied art at the primary level and in high school I dropped history and took art instead. So when I graduated from my high school I knew from inside I wanted to be an artist.

IW: What did it mean for you to be an artist at that stage?

BW: In art school later I was taught the theory of art and art history. The funny thing was that when I graduated I did not know who I was. I learned to do all these things: One paints and it looks like Renaissance or Impressionism. “But who am I as a painter?” I asked myself. For a longtime I used to do traditional subjects like mother and child. It felt familiar. I borrowed from the context of my environment. The context was social. When my mom fell ill, it was then that my work changed. My work lost color. I could not see the beauty in color. The context of my work had totally shifted. My mom was the only parent I had known. My dad died when I was very young. My mom and I were very close. So when she died I felt like someone had pulled a rug under my feet.

I remember during the wake my mother’s family telling me that I had to put on a brave face. So here I was this cheery person, chatting them up. Wakes are funny because people just sit down, have tea, catch up, and share stories and laugh. It is a time of tragedy but everyone is laughing. We buried her and everybody left and I felt the stillness in the house then. I felt like I was almost buried with her. It was just quiet. She was gone. Before that you are so bombarded by everything you don’t have a moment to actually think. And then you know she is not coming back. You don’t know what to do. It is almost as if you lose sight of who you are. Everything I am, my identity is very much attached to her. So who am I without her? So how do you function like this? I started not to care if my work was positively received. That was in 2006.

Prior to that an artist from Belgium and I had done a workshop with people who were HIV positive. When they shared their stories I was shocked. At first I did not understand this whole idea of empathy. There was a divide somewhere. Eventually I opened myself to them. There was so much hope, and fear! I started doing this series of portraits where the resemblance did not matter. I was trying to express the emotions, the things that we hide because I realize that faces become masks. People are not allowed to express what they feel. I realized from that workshop that we are mirrors of each other. I became more open; I had more empathy.

IW: How did that show in your work?

BW: The only way to grieve is through my work. That is how the portraits I made after my mother’s death felt for me. You present this front and people think you are OK but you are not.   I painted the Immortality series, which explore the notion that we may die physically but we are very much alive in the memory of the ones we have left behind. I believe that when we have stopped remembering that person is completely dead. I finished the series in 2009 but in a way it morphed into the next series.

IW: Is that what you are working on now?

Currently I am working on the Straight Jacket series. It is about my identity as a female in a very patriarchal society. I look at the boundaries that are set by society. Being an artist, female, single, everyone is asking me: “when are you getting married?” Being married and having kids is the pinnacle of success especially in an African setting. I am not married, don’t have kids, and work.

My work is very autobiographical. It is my story. When you stop caring how people look at you and at your work, you are freer. I am even surprised at my own work.

IW: How would you describe your creative process?

BW: I mull over something for a very long time. Most of my inspiration comes from something I have read or watched. The image of the straight jacket becomes a metaphor for what I am thinking or feeling at that time. I take note of what I am thinking. I sketch.

I have books on anatomy. There were in my family’s library. My dad wanted to be a doctor. I utilize them. I am very fascinated with how the body works. The flesh, the blood like in the anatomy books. I see it as color and think about how I can put it into my work. I try to use the exposed inside as a metaphor for what is happening to a person. I tend to feel that I can’t be the only person feeling like this. So I try to put it into a universal context.

I love the human form. It is central to my work. After I prepare the canvas I sketch. After that color takes over and I can paint a layer and leave it, just look at it for the whole day, thinking about how I can develop it. I find accidents I can play around with. But I am very deliberate.

IW: What do these dark areas of color that spill over refer to?

BW: The dark shadows…it is something that has been recurrent in all my paintings. I did the Immortality series when my mom died. Everybody moved on I felt like there was a shadow trailing behind me. I could not catch up with people. I felt stuck and people did not understand that. There are things that you never stop mourning.  “For life” I say.

I never use black. It is almost dark purple.

I am very content with my life but the world is not content with who I am because I don’t follow a typical idea of who I should be.

IW: The figure screaming. Is it about rebelling against conventions and expectations? Could it also be that you are struggling with that shadow?

BW: When I speak of shadows it points to my presence in the work. My figures are androgynous, neither male nor female. The Straight Jacket series is about breaking with conformity.

IW: Tell me about your way of painting?

BW:I love the idea of layering, there is much building of color. I want the final color to be so thin that you can see underneath it. In the Straight Jacket series I paint the form first and I paint the reds that denote the internal organs, the chest cavity exposed, like it is almost drooling blood. It is so gory at times. I put the straight jacket on. I put it in such a thin way, but I want it to cover yet one needs to see through it.  Other works are very solid.

IW: What makes you want to do choose transparency over opacity?

BW: I don’t want to be too analytical. Sometimes it feels like an out of body experience. People come to my studio and they are shocked. They ask me if I am ok. It must be something in my unconscious that needs to come out. I do not care if it shocks you. It is there. I have a sense of peace when I look at my paintings. I am mentally exhausted and need to sleep then.

My work takes a long time to develop. I am always thinking about it, taking and adding. I don’t work on a single canvas. I work on multiple canvases. They can look messy. But they will be done. I like the idea of peeling away the skin.

IW: It seems to me that you are very deliberate with the composition.

BW: I am very particular about form. I don’t like constraining my form to the canvas. When you think about ourselves as human beings, we see ourselves as finite. We die but I feel our spirit lives on. You live and grieve beyond the canvas. When I constrain my figures within the canvas I feel like my figures are almost not breathing. I want the viewer to feel this person is living beyond the canvas.

In a new piece I just did there is no straight jacket. I am thinking about our roots, not just the sense of what family we are born into, or where we come from, but how we are brought up with ideals. I find that we are self-consuming. We stand in our own way. It is more about how we think and stand in our own way. At times my work is almost literal. You can see that one figure is devoured by the other.

People ask me why do I decapitate my characters. We are never present in our lives. We are almost mechanical.

I say to people: If you want pretty pictures, I don’t know how to do that anymore. Beauty is so temporary.

There is loneliness when you break the rules of the community.

By wanting ones own path, people shun you people, don’t include you.

It has its costs.

People did not buy my work when I was doing “Renaissance” painting. It had no center. When I did the Immortality series it was shown in a restaurant in Westlands. People bought my work. I was grieving; I found it disturbing. I felt utterly exposed. My work transformed because I spoke of the human condition. I am painting what is very real to me.

IW: Who was your most important influence?

BW: People have referenced Goya, Soutine. I had no idea who Soutine was.

I was so inspired by Richard Kimathi and Justus Kyalo.

IW: While your work is autobiographical, can you tell me what else feeds into it?

BW: My ideas also come from what I see, the special situations like the political one, and what affects me in my environment.

During the post election I did a painting called Point of Entry that spoke about the first time I felt afraid. As human beings we are capable of such extremes. I remember not leaving the house. It felt like house arrest. I lived in apartment block where different tribes lived. The tribes were the issue of the violence. You say to yourself: “How can human beings do stuff like that?” Unconsciously it stays with you and you are haunted by it.

The news was the only entertainment. At some point I had to get out. I got out and drove. There was not a single car or person on the road. It felt like an apocalypse had happened. Yet it was a relief to get out.

Beatrice Wanjiku’s works have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Group exhibitions from 2015  Paper II at Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi; and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner at Richard Taittinger in New York, USA.

In May The African Art Fair 1:54 was again with us New Yorkers in Red Hook, Brooklyn at Pioneer Works. The mix of artists was different than last year making the fair an opportunity for discoveries for New Yorkers and I found works that peeked my interest.

It was very well attended and therefore a great opportunity to network. A series of talks curated by Koyo Kouoh, founder and artistic director of Raw Material Company, Dakar had also been scheduled and I learned more about other creative web ventures – TrueAfrica and OkayAfrica – that focus on promoting African arts and culture and aim to reach the young hip African generation. Being cool is their motto! And it is working! They have a large following on the African continent. Most of them started for the same reason I did my blog: a desire to correct a mostly negative portrayal of the continent by focusing on the enormous creative energy that infuses the continent. Professionally run their writers are often based on the African continent, giving the fresh and dynamic reporting the perspective of an insider.

While run increasingly professionally I felt it fell short at being as exciting as the 1:54 edition last fall in London. Smaller, it represented a limited sample of what is happening on the African continent. While Red Hook is a cool location it is actually an awkward space and a few galleries found themselves assigned pathways/passages in lieu of booths where the works were not shown to their best advantage.
Walking into the fair I found myself immediately absorbed by the work of Omar Ba who had a solo showing at the Art Bartschi & cie booth. His work was just fantastic. I have written about his art before and it is with pleasure that I see his painting becoming more self-assured. The usually slightly chaotic scenes are more structured yet keep their highly patterned quality and imagery that references tribal decoration, natural fauna, self-styled leaders, and factional warfare. His characters loom larger, closer to the surface almost spilling into our space minimizing the psychological distance between the turbulent worlds he evokes and our present circumstances.

“His work was mostly sold by the beginning of the opening night” said the gallery attendant with satisfaction. Owning two of his earlier works I am particularly pleased that he is doing well though that also means his prices are going up and getting a new piece may be a bit more expensive. I also have to contend with more competition! While still represented by Art Bartschi in Switzerland he has changed galleries in Paris and is now with Daniel Templon.

Em’kal Eyongakpa’s photographic installation at Apalazzo gallery was the next work to catch my eye. I was not quite sure what was going on but I found the enigmatic interweaving of reality and illusion in the forest setting particularly intriguing. I felt the same way as when I read poetry. My senses are awakened, I am drawn by the dreamy quality and the elusive meaning is what makes me feel challenged and leads me to ponder my reactions.

Hanging on the opposite wall two of Edson Chagas conceptual photographic self-portraits where his head is covered by carrier bags were a reminder that rampant consumerism is taking over urban Africa. I thought the one with the words “World of Hope” turned upside down particularly appropriate these days!

One of Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze’s drawings was hanging at Mariane Ibrahim gallery. She creates these fantastical scenes that have a collage aesthetic where imaginary characters that she calls aliens or hybrid creatures engage in mysterious and playful activities. As she explained during one of the Fair’s panels much of her work is anchored in the idea of play. Yet through out her work and as she constructs these new paradigms she also addresses contemporary issues of displacement and hybridity. She is getting a lot of attention these days. She is one of the finalists of the Prix Canson Sixth Edition whose works are being shown at the Drawing Center in Soho, New York City. Njideka Akunyili Crosby is the other finalist of Nigerian descent. I am thrilled to see African artists’ work being shown at the Drawing Center!

Kenyan multi-disciplinary artist Jim Chuchu’s photograph tinged with eroticism where a man seems engaged in some mysterious ritual is part of a body of work that attempts to reconstruct future-past anonymous deities, their devotees and forgotten religious rites. Being gay and therefore rejected by the local prevailing religions Chuchu invents new religions and rituals that are inclusive of gay people.

Hanging in the back of Jack Bell’s booth, in his storage corner, was a lovely wall hanging “ God Save The King” by Gastineau Massamba from the Republic of Congo. Here an Okapi, a native animal to Central Africa and a national icon is beautifully and sparingly embroidered on a broad sheath of linen speckled with delicate flowers. The whimsy of the piece was enchanting and I was seduced. However it is the story behind the work and the artist’s choice of medium that moved me deeply. Massamba has chosen embroidery in part because that particular process helps him contend with the recurring war traumas that he has been living through. Part art / part therapy: a magical mix.

In a totally different vein just around the corner at Richard Taittinger hangs the work of Frances Goodman from South Africa from her recent solo New York show Rapaciously Yours. Her wall sculptures made out of acrylic nails looked like scaled creatures at once beautiful and yet also somewhat creepy. I preferred her car seat sculpture where she sews on the worn cover of a car seat a text using pieces of fake diamonds that speaks of sex workers mixed feelings as they lose their innocence while gaining sexual power. The contrast between the refinement of the glittering text and the roughness and coarseness of the car seat was what caught my attention at first. Once I knew the underlying story I was even more intrigued. I liked the feminist tone and there was a little of Tracy Emins’ sexual provocation and aesthetic but with even more of an edge and without her narcissistic undercurrent. Boy! Did that take me back to my teenage years in Paris where hookers were part of daily life in my posh neighborhood, the 16^th arrondissement. I would notice the same hooker regularly pull into our street in her green car, presumably service her customer and then drive away. We were not shocked, it made for a good story but mostly it made me aware of other lives, other realities that were not so easily dismissible.

The work of painter Beatrice Wanjiku at Artlabafrica is edgy,  aggressively disturbing. She paints howling figures that are struggling to break out from the constraints of straightjackets and become metaphors of human struggles and pain.. There is no holding back here. Her paint is applied thinly and has the transparency and looseness that one would associate more with watercolors and as a consequence the resulting image has a blurry quality almost like a dream; maybe more a nightmare in this case. All facial features dissolve into a big black howl. She is an artist who deserves our attention!  I find her  raw and direct. She makes herself totally vulnerable and the work is that much more convincing for it.

Peterson Kamwathi , a contemporary artist from Kenya had his first solo show in New York City at the Volta art fair in March. ArtLabAfrica had been selected to show Kamwathi latest series “Positions”. This series came about as a reaction to the increasing tension between different religions all over the world which was exacerbated by the Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi by Somali Islamic militants in September 2013. It also feels quite timely taking in considering the current events in Kenya.

His work is rendered in thick layers of charcoal, pastel, watercolor, stencils and more recently collage on thick watercolor paper. While rooted in the figurative tradition it is highly conceptual and addresses social, political and cultural issues. Fascinated by human behavior and daily rituals, in his more recent bodies of work he has turned his critical eye to observing the individual in a group setting: political gatherings, queues, and now group rituals within organized religions.

The structure and anatomy of prayer is at the core of this body of work. Moving away from a more specific rendering of individuality, his static figures are generic, almost abstract set against a background which is either left blank or when densely decorative is void of any vanishing points.  Figures are individually drawn and cut out and then assembled in a group pointing simultaneously to the human vulnerability expressed in the act of prayer and the power found in the collective act of organized prayer.

All too aware of the growing tension between Christianity and Islam locally but also world wide Peterson explores here the similarities in ritualistic positions that transcend difference of opinions, and beliefs. Individuality is subsumed here in favor of the human desire for community, and in this case for surrendering to a spiritual higher power. I liked the body of work and admired Peterson’s courage in engaging with current issues, and endorsed his message of peace and acceptance of differences yet a little voice in my head kept telling me that there was something disturbing to me in these images of group prayer. I could not help thinking of how many atrocities have been committed through out the centuries by deeply religious people who pray a lot!

It is the first time a Kenyan artist has a solo show in New York, and I delayed my departure for my walk in the bush in Kenya to be sure to see the exhibition. I had heard about Kamwathi two years ago when I was in South Africa for the Joburg art fair. While having coffee with Mark Coetze in Cape Town I told him about my particular interest in Kenya and he recommended I try to see Kamwathi the next time I was going to Nairobi.

That November (2012) after a week on a bush walk in the Ndotos mountains in Norther Kenya, a day/night in a hotel room in Lamu feeling sick like a dog, and before getting on my flight back to the US I decided to spend a night in Nairobi and look up Kamwathi. Connecting with him was easy and he gave me an address on the outskirts of the city. That raised some apprehension as I had never ventured on my own in Nairobi to say nothing of beyond!  Once I asked William, a driver the charity MEAK uses when in town, to take me to his studio/house I felt more at ease .

I did not know what to expect. What did an emerging artist studio look like in Nairobi, Kenya? I have visited several spacious, at times factory-like artist studios here in New York but I had a feeling this could be more like my mother’s make shift studios – at one point she made the large entry hall her studio when she lived on her own in Paris.

Finding the house was not easy. After a few wrong turns in a semi-urban area we found the dirt road that led to his house nestled in lush tropical vegetation. Peterson came out to greet me with a huge smile and led me into his studio, a modest space behind his house where he lived with his wife.

I was encouraged to sit down and relax. No art talk was going to happen before he had made me tea!  I was totally unused to this! Instead of him being immediately the focus of attention as is customary in New York he was making me feel the honored guest.
A bit uncomfortable at first I gradually began to relax and let my eyes wander, taking in his life size charcoal drawings in various stages of completion. Peterson’s creative process was there to be witnessed.

A framed print of a massive bull from his Bull series was leaning against the wall next to a starker rendering of a life size sheep. On the opposite wall, a study of figures set in a row emerging out of a cloud of charcoal hung next to a large cardboard covered with small sketches. An oversized cut out figure of a man hung on top of it all. Peterson appears to works surrounded by his ideas, past and present.

While these were powerful images and beautifully executed testifying to Peterson’s artistic talent I admit I was a bit uncomfortable with the animal imagery. I knew it was my Western taste and experience that was getting in the way. Peterson reminded me that cattle and sheep were equivalent to cash in the bank in Kenya and a metaphor for wealth and power. I appreciated then the symbolism and I liked that Peterson was creating works of art with the Kenyan audience in mind and not only an international audience.

Peterson’s work has been increasingly engaged with the historical and current socio-political reality of Kenya and has evolved from a critical gaze on Kenya’s domineering leadership (Bull Series) and passive electorate (Sheep Series) to a full indictment of the government, the role of the media, the police, the electorate commission and the UN   (Sitting Allowance).

Sitting Allowance, includes eight life size pieces – figures arranged in frieze-like fashion stare the audience down – and is the body of work created in response to the violence that followed the general election of 2007-2008 and which propelled him to national and international attention. These works were groundbreaking in the context of Kenya’s visual arts in as much as they were playing, as works of art, an active part in a political discourse and in a societal self-reflection.

As we were looking closely at his subsequent series Queues we started to talk about the prevalence of queues in Kenya: queues of people waiting to vote, queues of people waiting for a seat in a bus or matatus to name a few. At times one can wait close to two hours for one’s turn for a seat, which means it takes forever to get to work! In his drawings Peterson captures the Kenyans in all their diversity. Women carrying babies on their back, or bundles on their head, men in suits or carrying satchels, or jerrycans of water.

Queues are conceptual tools for Kamwathi. In speaking of his 2010-2011 Queues series, he explains his choice of subject matter:

“ Queues are manifestations of events in humanity. They are testaments or monuments to the consequences of events of the past, are the representation of events in the present and they are also clues and signs that point to events that may possibly occur in the future.”

“I am trying to look at channeling, conditioning and manipulation as symbolized in a queue. This is in the area of politics, culture and economics, in both contemporary and historical worlds.”

It was easy talking with Peterson. A gentle, caring and considerate man he seemed most concerned with the lack of arts facilities in Nairobi. A printing machine was desperately needed for art students! Pretty much self-taught, he attributed his mother as having installed his first interest in art after she gave him a watercolor set. He graduated from the Shang Tao media Arts College in 2005 and became well known as a woodblock master printer.

Printmaking and charcoal drawings have been his mediums of choice. His Queues series stylistically reminded me of the graphic work of Mexican muralists and of the work of William Kentridge and he confirmed their influence.

He then pulled out recent drawings from a large portfolio that he went to get from a room in the back of the studio. Made to look like cut outs, these were totally different from the work we had just been discussing. While the subject was still the human figure, it was drawn with a more abstract line, little shading and set against the white of the paper where all sense of place had been removed. I loved the contemporary feel of these works and told him so. We parted soon after that and I felt moved by this experience. It was the first time I had met a talented artist that was deeply humble yet fully committed to his work and ambitious. The combination is a rare occurrence in New York city!

A couple years later it was with great pleasure that I saw his work in London at the art fair 1:54 and I was totally excited that it was in the fashion of the last drawings he had showed me! Perhaps I had an impact, perhaps not but I felt privileged that I had been a witness to his process.

On a less positive note I read on a tweet about the Venice Biennale that there were going to be mostly Chinese artists in the Kenya pavillon!!!! See article  Kamwhati would have been a good choice.