WAMBUI KAMIRU CREATES HARAMBEE 63 INSTALLATION TO COMMEMORATE FREEDOM FIGHTERS' ROLE IN KENYA'S LIBERATION STRUGGLE

Saturday, September 28, 2013 Saturday Nation

African liberation struggle through the eyes of an artist

Wambui Kamiru during her Harambee63 exhibition at the Kuona Trust, Nairobi. Photo/FILE 

In Summary

• Wambui would contest my suggesting her film is exceptional
• What’s equally striking about her installation is her meticulous attention to detail
• Wambui says she hopes her installation sparks debate and critical conversation, not only in Kenya but around the region where she hopes to take what she feels are the most portable and relevant features

By Margaretta wa Gacheru

margacheru@gmail.com

When I arrived at the Kuona Trust’s most recent exhibition — a multimedia installation entitled Harambee 63, what was most striking was not so much the discovery that its creator Wambui Kamira has a Masters of Science degree in African History from Oxford University (although that’s pretty impressive).

Nor is it the fact that she’s one Kenyan visual artist who can get several ambassadors, corporate heads and even a former presidential candidate to attend her exhibition opening.

For me, it’s the way she also managed to construct a low-budget documentary film for her show, which captures so many memorable moments with leading 20th century revolutionaries – from Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba and Martin Luther King Jr to Franz Fanon, Leopold Senghor and even John F. Kennedy.

Wambui would contest my suggesting her film is exceptional. “The material is accessible to any interested person. The clips are all on YouTube,” says the petite historian turned visual artist, expressing a sentiment that comes out clearly in her installation, the subtitle of which is African Revolutions and Ordinary People.

“It’s ordinary people who make revolutions,” says Wambui, who has chosen to create a simulation of one of the most common sites where so-called ordinary people congregate – a humble everyday people’s bar.

Complete with everything from the mabati and cardboard walls, plastic table clothes, cups and chairs to the wrought iron grill that separates the cashbox, Mpesa agent and beer crates from the drinking hall, what’s equally striking about her installation is her meticulous attention to detail.

 Wambui with one of her 'African Freedom Fighter' boots. Photo by margaretta wa gacheru

For she doesn’t forget the wall menu, dirty ashtray or even the pangas stacked up in a corner, which she says is a feature that reflects back on the 1950s in Kenya when the Mau Mau used bars of sympathisers as transit points for weapons on route to the freedom fighters in the forest.

It’s a historical period of African history that Wambui began researching on as an undergraduate at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, US. It’s also a subject that she did her masters’ dissertation on at Oxford, entitled Kenya 1948-1953: Memorialisation of the Kimathi Family.

NOT JUST ABOUT KENYA'S LIBERATION STRUGGLE

Although the beer ads on the bar walls are for Kenyan drinks and the menu is “Mama Njeri’s”, Wambui insists her installation isn’t only about the Kenyan liberation struggle.

“All over Africa, ordinary people living under colonial rule would congregate either in churches or in bars. (In Black America, it was mainly in the churches).” That was where they met to devise strategies for gaining their freedom and independence.

“Africans [and other people of colour] living under colonialism were hungry for freedom. In Kenya it was land that symbolised the struggle and the idea of people gaining freedom,” says Wambui who admits she has a special interest in the Mau Mau war.

She’s fundamentally concerned that the Mau Mau struggle has been pigeon-holed by many historians as being little more than a “tribal uprising’ rather than a people’s war of liberation. She’s also concerned that the main aim of Mau Mau is often said to simply be land, but for her, land is the tangible symbol of an ideology of liberation which she says has been theorised by Pan-African thinkers like Franz Fanon, Malcolm X, Leopold Senghor and even Martin Luther King, Jr.

Indeed, she says one of the goals of her installation is to situate the Kenyan war of independence within a global context of the Pan-African liberation movement; which is why her film (screened throughout the exhibition) features so many Pan-Africanists.
The other striking dimension of her installation is the 63 pairs of gum boots which sit in aligned rows on the bar floor, and which Wambui says are also symbols of resistance.

For not only were they used by South African gold miners who are still oppressed and underpaid to this day, the boots also became instruments of African artistry as miners living under Apartheid created one of the most powerful and poignant dance expressions of defiance during the decolonisation struggle.

Wambui hopes her installation sparks debate and critical conversation, not only in Kenya but around the region where she hopes to take what she feels are the most portable and relevant features of her show, namely her film and the boots.

The rest she says can be easily assembled anywhere in Africa or wherever people of colour went through the process of decolonization.

Claiming that period of African decolonization peaked in 1960 when seven countries gained their Independence, she said that by 1963 the movement was on the decline since Kenya was the only country in the region which gained its independence that year.

“The exhibition comes up just to 1963 because after that, African countries got caught up in Cold War politics and I didn’t want to go there,” she says. But she was wise to stay focused on 1963 and the period leading up to it since that was a time of hope and dynamism and defiance when Africans knew what they wanted and that was their freedom.

Wambui says she hopes her installation sparks debate and critical conversation, not only in Kenya but around the region where she hopes to take what she feels are the most portable and relevant features.