I was staying in a boutique hotel in Nairobi, in a secure enclave in the Westlands not too far from the Circle Art Agency. On evening I decided to investigate the nearby shops, in particular a clothing boutique that had caught my eye. I entered the boutique and was warmly welcomed by the owner and several of her elegant customers who were sharing a bottle of wine: One of the young ladies was getting married. I was the only white woman there but that did not seem to matter. Once I said I was in Nairobi to find out about the art scene one of the women revealed she was an avid collector and the conversation veered from buying clothes to buying African art! After that I was all set to hear more about the art market in Nairobi.

I went to meet Danda Jaroljmek at the Circle Art Agency the next morning. Danda was Kuona Trust’s third director for eight years from 2004-2012. She then went to start an art advisory business Circle Art Agency in 2012 eventually growing it into a white cube gallery. I arrived to see the artist Dennis Muraguri close up his van with the few last pieces of his show stacked in the back. I had hoped to see the show but obviously I was too late! Some of his sculptures had caught my attention. Danda greeted me at the door and we went to sit in the viewing room.

It was immediately apparent to me that Danda had a strong personality, and very clear ideas of what she wanted to do. She rarely takes no for an answer and she believes in challenging her artists and her collectors.

We started talking about Dennis Muraguri’s latest exhibition where she encouraged or maybe more accurately told him to make new sculpture. He is a multimedia artist working in painting, printmaking, and sculpture and is mostly known for his Matatu  prints. In his work he explores the urban culture of contemporary Nairobi. She totally believes in him. She recalls an exchange she had with him prior to the exhibition.

Danda: “I would love to give you a show but you have to make new sculpture.”

Dennis: “I have done that before.”

Danda:” I know, but start again because actually they are more interesting. You do work in ways that nobody else does here and you also finish pieces in a refined way.”

She says to me: “People want to stroke his work, it is exhausting for him. Everything he does is very physical. He makes his large prints himself. He manages to work in a massive scale.”

His opening was a big success. He had a matatu (Kenyan minibus that is the main mode of public transport) outside on the lawn with a big video screen inside. It seems that those matatu rides, which can be very long are full of entertainment!

Though this was early August, a time when the gallery goes a bit dormant there was as much activity as ever.

In the background, I hear the cling- clang of corrugated iron sheets. Young men are installing The MoXibition/ Jobless Corner Campus conceived by Kevo Sterox and Sam Hopkins. A performative work, about the abundance of NGOs in Kenya, will demand the participation of the audience. Concurrently the gallery is shipping out a group of works on paper for a pop-up show in at the Peponi hotel in Lamu on the coast. That project has already run into a problem as the flight carrying the works just got cancelled! Notwithstanding this hiccup,  the show did take place and was successful. Though Lamu has been part of the scare list for tourists, it still holds a lot of appeal for the more adventurous and the people who own secondary homes there. It is also a magical place! The following week will be the exhibition of Michael Soi’s work at the gallery.

This is also the first year the gallery is doing art fairs, in Cape Town, Joburg, Dubai, New York, London and Paris. Danda wants to broaden the gallery’s exposure and play an active role in bringing East African art to an international audience. Because the East African art scene is still pretty fragmented, with each country still in the process of emerging in terms of contemporary art she is concerned that the South Africans will weigh in too much in the framing of East African contemporary art instead of the respective countries. We talk about her experience, the art scene, and the auction she has organized since 2013.

Born in the UK but raised in The Gambia Danda appeared on the Kenyan art scene in the late 1990’s. Trained as a sculptor she worked for the Triangle Arts Trust from 2000 to 2010 as the African co-coordinator and became Kuona Trust ’s director in 2004.

Danda explained that the second and third generation of Kenyan artists with the exception of a few who are internationally trained such as Ato Malinda, have been greatly influenced by the Kuona Trust and workshop system. Running parallel were the programs fostered by the Goethe Institute and the Alliance Francaise.

She recalls:

“It was a great privilege to be its third director. It was about networks, sharing experience and exchange. Information exchange. You have to have an outward look too. Kuona was the mothership.”

On the commercial side of things it was a slow process. Upon leaving Kuona Trust Danda shifted focus. She felt that there was still a lot to be done in terms of developing a market of buyers for these artists’ works.

She describes her new ventures.

DJ: After eight years at Kuona – it almost killed me – what do you do next? I have never been on the commercial side of things. But what was really apparent was there had been a huge focus on developing the artist and less focus on developing markets.

IW: How was their work being sold?

DJ: A lot of artists sell from their studios. People like to visit them. There is also Carol Lys’s One Off gallery, which has been very successful for a very long time. There was RaMoMa (Rahimtulla Museum of Modern art). A trust was set up and it opened a big gallery space. First in a tower block up the hill and then it purchased a great place in Parklands. It was very ambitious. They had four exhibitions that opened simultaneously once a month. Carol Lys was running it at the time and it did create a culture of visiting galleries. That is something we are quite focused on. We do a variety of things to attract different people to art – people who don’t necessarily have a background in art. You have to make it cool and the place to be. RaMoMa was successful but perhaps in the end overextended. We all learned from that mistake.

Carol went back to her original practice to having her gallery at home and in different locations. She has a lovely space in her garden.

I felt that we had to come up with alternative ways to the rules of how we show art here in Nairobi. I was lucky at the time because Fiona Fox – she had worked at the Tate – had moved here and she had set up the African Acquisition committee for the Tate. She had worked in Cairo at the Townhouse gallery. She contacted me and I said that I wanted to set up this organization. She and I spend the next six months researching and creating databases and making lists and we decided to start off as an agency providing art advisory services. I was terrified of opening a gallery and I am not a risk taker!!! . So we started small, just this office and the other small room (viewing room). We thought that one of the important things was to create new platforms so the auction idea happened.

ISW: As an art consultant you were grooming collectors. Were they mostly from here?

DJ: Our focus was entirely on that to start with.

IW: How did you do that?

DJ: One of our directors of the board is very much a man about town and in Kenya and knew lots of people. We tapped into his connections. People started to contact us. We wanted to do a series of events, pop-ups around Nairobi. Kenyans love a party. It is about the networking, being seen at an event. There are lots of VIP events that are glamorous in Nairobi but not traditionally a gallery opening night.

For the very first event I was contacted by PricewaterhouseCoopers. They wanted to commission some art. That is something very close to my heart. Actually my degree is in Public Art. I focused on site -specific work. There is not enough of it here. So we commissioned two artists: Dennis Muraguri is one of them and Eltayeb Dawalbeit did a huge piece in the foyer of Delta Towers in Westlands. I saw this ground floor, it was just covered in cement and I asked if I could use it for an exhibition and they said yes. We put together an exhibition very quickly in this enormous empty space with big windows. It looked like a giant warehouse and everyone walked in and said it was like being in Soho, New York – though it was more like we imagined it to be since most of us had not been to New York).

I always have been interested in abstraction. I am not a painter and I admire painters enormously. I think that there is still a lot of lack of understanding about abstract expressionism and I felt the space was perfect for it. It was almost sort of a homage to the 50’s in America and Britain. The show was called Xtract Subtract Abstract. We had quotes all over the walls about what abstraction was.

There is always an element of what we do that is educational. Everything we do is to introduce our audience to something new. Something unexpected – a new way of working or that art has the power to change things. That was a big bang opening and everyone was talking about it and suddenly people are coming to us and we got really good press for it.

ISW: The works on the wall were from local artists?

DJ: Yes. I had eight artists. We organized a think tank about why you make the work you do, who inspired you, do you have a text that has influenced you? It was a mixture of Kenyan, Sudanese, and European artists who have residence here. We get accused of not showing white artists. That is nonsense. In our auction we have only nationals (no matter what color you are). In the gallery we are less fussy. But if people are coming to the gallery to see East African art, they have to see East African art!

The shows did very well. We sold a lot. We have been lucky – The beginning of this year was a bit quiet with the banks closing but the last couple of months have been quite good.

IW: Are there repeat collectors?

DJ: I am actually doing some analysis on that. The collectors change. We do have people who buy for the first time and buy a few works and then stop buying. We have people who get obsessed and buy regularly. We don’t have enough of those, the real collector! We have the young generation of Kenyans who are dipping their toe, buying something small and thinking about it. And we have the international collectors now who come to us or buy from presentation that we send. As a buyer you trust us to be showing the best, or the art you should be looking at. It is still quite a mix and it depends on the platform. The auction is much more Kenyan than the gallery. The gallery is more long-term European residents but it depends on the show.

IW: How did the auction idea come about?

DJ: I manage the Robert Devereux’s trust at the moment. I have been doing it for a couple of years. In 2013 Giles Apiati from Bonham’s contacted him for the 2013 sale Africa Now. They were doing an African Focus on a country in Africa and it would be for charity. They had done one on Uganda and now they were on to Kenya. I put together eight really good works, which did very well. I don’t know when the idea for the auction came along but I think that Fiona and I felt it was a very traditional way to buy art, a safe way, and a transparent way.

At the first auction people did not understand the figures the art was going at. Everybody was a beginner at the art auction process. You would get two people bidding and suddenly the price would go way up beyond the actual value. But Giles said to me that people like to bid because they like to know there is an under bidder. They like to know they are not the only person who likes that work. It builds confidence. I did not understand it until our first auction.

IW: Did you have a mixed crowd?

DJ: We had a black Kenyan crowd, and many Asian Kenyans. It was crazy. We were turning people away. It was terrifying but it was a big success. It was down to the glamour of it. It was easy for us to put up an up market event because we had very good sponsors. All my years at Kuona I never managed to get corporate sponsorship except once from SafariCom. The minute I set up Circle art Agency and planned events, we had the banks, the luxury cars, the champagne companies asking to participate. Our commission is the profit, but it is six months work. Most of the pieces were primary market from Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia but we also had secondary market pieces. In the third auction in 2015 we featured 10 works that were consigned to us by the Emerson foundation, set up by hotelier and art collector in Zanzibar to raise money for various art projects in Zanzibar. We also had pieces from a woman in the US who had bought two Eli Kyeyene works in an estate sale in the US. We sold one in the second auction and the one in the third auction went for more than 3 times its high estimate!

Fantastic work Danda!

I saw her in London at the 1:54 fair where she was doing well selling Dennis Muraguri’s matatu prints, Jackie Karuti’s video and drawings and Ethiopian Ephrem Solomon’ bold portraits using woodcut and mixed media.

This fall she held her first photography show at the gallery curated by James Muriaki, which again was well received locally. The work was appealing and it makes me think that these artists would really benefit from a photography workshop such as the ones offered by the Market Workshop in Johannesburg. As usual a lack of infrastructure and funds are the main obstacles!

This is not an exhaustive report on the art scene in Nairobi – The Nest collective is unfortunately not included here – however it does illustrate the importance of developing local infrastructure. While contemporary art in Kenya is still in an emerging stage I think it is a very useful example of what is being done and also still needs to be done to create a self sustainable art scene.

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

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.

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.

One thing one learns when being in Africa is never to be rigid when you make plans!

I came to Nairobi  in November of last year. On my way to a fund raising safari walk up North country I arrived with a group of ladies and men at the hotel after a long flight only to find that our rooms had been given to another group that had decided to extend its stay! So adapt we did, grumpily at first because after all it was 11pm! Eventually we all had a fun time even though we had to be bused to another hotel less to our liking.

This time around, in July,  I did not want to spend time in Nairobi, but plans changed and here I was killing time before my flight to Lewa Downs  the next day. I decided to go walk around town, which is something I have never done in any African city. I decided to brave my fears and after being encouraged by a local friend I took off trying to look as inconspicuous as I could. Obviously that was impossible. I was the only white person in the street in midtown Nairobi.

The traffic was heavy and unruly as is often the case in Nairobi, but I managed to not get myself run over when I crossed the street and made my way towards the market area where I was told I would find small shops and mall. Nothing caught my attention, but I sure caught the eye of a few men looking for a shopping victim/tourist. I first rebuffed pleasantly a few who looked suspicious. When I became braver and ready for some “small adventure” I let myself be convinced to venture off the main road by cheerful, and persuasive James Munywoki who wanted to show me his father’s curio store. Perhaps I was reckless but it all turned out to be fun and safe.

In the midst of West and East African masks, and other wooden sculptures I found these quite amusing wooden figurines. Straight out of West Africa (Mali or Benin) they immediately caught my eye. Stiff  but colorful, stylish renditions of white colonialists, their slightly cartoony character appealed to my western sensibility.   When looking at them all grouped together I thought of a crowd of foreign bystanders watching some event like a parade or game of cricket! James and I bargained hard, he walked me to the ATM machine and the next thing I knew James was walking me back to the hotel carrying four figurines under his arm.  When I got home two weeks later I put them in my entry hall across my front door and my daughter told me they were her favorite art pieces.

Two months later I was in Ghana at the Artists Alliance Gallery in Accra and here is what I see! More figurines! I don’t miss a beat and get two more.

Read the next post for more about the arts in Ghana.

I wrote the draft of this blog post before I flew off to Ghana and since then the Nairobi tragedy at the West Gate Mall happened. I consider myself very lucky I had such a day and feel really sad for Kenya and the people who lost their lives.