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.

After my meeting with at ARTLabAFrica with artist Beatrice Wanjiku and David Thuku, I went with  David to check out Kuona Trust which I had heard so much about and where David had a studio space. Set in a green part of town the artists’ studios are housed in long metal sheds/ hangars organized around a central gathering area. Most artists share small studios. Indeed David Thuku shares his space with another artist. I asked him if they got in each other’s way but he said no. They each have their corner. He works mostly from a large table set in the corner of the room.

These are open studios and I found the artists either working away in a variety of mediums – Dennis Muraguri was welding metal for one of his mixed media sculptures – many were painting  or milling around and chatting with each other. It was very informal and congenial. Some had held a studio for close to ten years, others were newcomers. Here artists are mentored, and Kuona Trust provides support, ressources and opportunities to experiment. There are technical workshops taught by senior artists, internships, residencies, and rented studio spaces. Artists sell their work from the studios and often are commissioned work.

Since art and art education sadly were never priorities for the Kenyan government – it was eliminated from the primary schools – and formal art training at the college level only happens at either Kenyatta University or the Buru Buru Institute of art most art teaching happens in workshops. This dates as far back as the 80’s. Kuona Trust is very much a reflection of that collaborative tradition and was instrumental in the development of the model.

Kuona Trust is part of the Triangle Arts Trust, which had been set up by Anthony Caro and Robert Loder in 1982 in England to create networks of artists, visual art organizations and artist led workshops in over 30 countries. It had the mission to  “counterbalance the tendency of the Western art world to put the emphasis on the object and its marketing rather than on the creative process itself.”

“ It was particularly successful in Africa” says Danda Jaroljmek, director of Circle Art Agency. “ It started off in South Africa where there was little connection between black and white artists and then it spread. Artists would go back to their home countries and say: ‘I want to do this as well!’ It was an extraordinary forum, I loved that it was artists doing it. It was not curators or collectors dictating who could get opportunities but it was artists talking to each other.”

Some other workshops worth noting are the Wasanii workshops, which happened during the 1990’s to 2011. In those workshops Kenyan artists would meet artists from around the world. Twenty-five artists – half from the host country half from around the world – would work together for 2 weeks in a remote place. Finally but no less important are the workshops led by the Kuona Trust artists that are held in the local communities where they teach art to the youth.

I liked this feeling of community and exchange. I also like that artists despite the lack of governmental support are out there helping themselves and others and are determined to make art a game changer.

Sadly since I wrote the first draft of this essay things have changed for the worse. Because of budgetary problems and lack of funding Kuona Trust is closing. It is very disappointing news but knowing the resilience and determination of some people in Nairobi I am optimistic that some new platform will take shape.

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.

I felt that the works displayed at Anne de Villepoix, a French gallery that has been showing African artists for many years, were strong. She offered a mix of recently produced works but also earlier works (early 2000) conveying a sense of history and scope to contemporary African art. A striking 2001 photographic diptych “Static Drift” by Ingrid Mwangi was hanging over the fireplace. Born in Kenya, daughter of a Kenyan father and German mother she was transported to Germany in her teens where she has settled and is now married to a German artist, Robert Hutter, with whom she works closely. In this work she uses her body as canvas. She addresses personal issues, such as her constant discomfort because of her mixed race status of always feeling the odd one out whether she is in Kenya or Germany – never black or white enough – and of broader issues of nationalism, colonialism and post colonialism. She challenges preconceptions of the African continent by showing it as a white shape and refers to the past colonial might of Germany by making it proportionally much larger. However the words she uses point to a different reality: of an African continent on the rise and of a Germany in decline. In the context of today’s current events this work made in 2001 seems prescient at least in terms of Germany’s aging population and slowing economy in contrast to Africa’s higher growth rate and growing population. However as with everything in life reality is more of a mixed bag. Economic growth in Africa while stronger than in Europe is not keeping pace with its population growth on the continent and many of the young are seeking jobs up in the Global North.

Mwangi’s use of her naked body to speak of boundaries evokes other thoughts in my mind. I think of the history of desire for the “exotic” or for the one that is different from oneself, and of how the female body has and is still in some cultures seen as the territory of men.

Here Mwangi reclaims her body. As she says: “ My body is the only thing that I own…I react, interpret and question the clichés and stereotypes with which I am faced..I use art to awaken consciences.”

Some other strong pieces graced Anne de Villepoix’s walls:

Barthélemy Toguo,

Omar Ba,

and Yashua Klos.

It was a first in London for Axis Gallery that had participated in 1:54 in New York and I was intrigued by the installation by Hervé Youmbi Two-Faced/Double Visage from his project Faces of Masks and while not quite successful visually I found it thought provoking. In this project Youmbi purposefully blurs boundaries between the ethnological and the contemporary, and between distinct tribal styles challenging systems of classification that have been historically favored by Western museums. He commissioned the Bamileke craftspeople from Cameroon to create a hybrid Ku’ngang mask incorporating the face of a Dogon mask from Mali. Once the chief of the Ku’ugang Society authorized the mask it was then activated during a ritual masquerade, which Youmbi filmed. One of the masks included in the installation incorporated Edvard Munch’s Scream: another example of hybridity. In reality ritual masks from some tribal African groups have morphed along the centuries and have absorbed elements from other cultures. For instance early 20^th century Yoruba Gelede masquerade masks incorporate colonial figures, and later elements of modernity such as bicycles. Museums have had a tendency historically to favor less hybrid pieces but things are changing. Also I just reviewed an exhibition of George Osodi’s photographs of Nigerian Monarchs where the contemporary and the ethnological were held in tension through out. It is good of Youmbi to challenge any simplistic or essentialist approach.

Axis was also showing the work of Jebila Okongwu.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a whole room dedicated to the poetic photographic work of Mohamed Camara. This is a lovely body of work that he did a few years back and sadly he has not produced new work since then as far as I know.

I liked the work of Zak Ové at Vigo gallery. Assemblage and collage are used for expressive means.

Here he finds objects that he picks up from the Thames and assembles them.

Aboulia and Armand Boua at Jack Bell gallery,

Beatrice Wanjiku at Artlab gallery

Délio Jasse at Tiwani Contemporary

Nemsa Leuba at Art Twenty One

Mimi Chereno Ng’ok at the Fondation Donwahi; she is showing at Les Rencontres de Bamako currently.

Billie Zangewa

Clay Apenouvon at Mariane Ibrahim, a gallery from Seattle whose presence on the international art scene is on the rise.

A few words of caution I feel need to be said. It is great that Contemporary African Art is getting much more attention in the West and that an international market for these artists’ work is taking shape. The only problem is that the pricing shifts to reflect an international pricing and gradually the works will be too expensive for a local middle-class African audience who already is slow to wake up to the idea of buying and supporting its contemporary artists.