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.

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.