'UNSELLABLE' ART AT NATIONAL MUSEUM AN OXYMORON

SO-CALLED ‘UNSELLABLE ART’ AT MUSEUM QUITE SALABLE By margaretta wa gacheru. Published may 31, 2013 Business Daily Tabitha's rescue mission Mounting a group exhibition at Nairobi National Museum and calling it ‘Unsellable Art’ seems like a contradiction or an oxymoron. When an artist or in this case the Kenya Visual Artists Network assembles an exhibition of art, the objective is normally to expose the art to the public and ideally inspire a few of them to actually buy the work. But if you put up a show and describe your art as ‘unsellable’, one would assume you either don’t expect the artworks will sell which could easily deter potential patrons from even bothering to come, or you are being ironic and hope to stimulate the public’s curiosity. I went for curiosity’s sake and found quite a few paintings and sculpture that was quite interesting; but I still feel the title of the show is unfortunate, imprecise and also a bit pretentious. The blurb on the entrance of the Museum’s Creativity Gallery claims the art on show is widely seen as ‘unsellable’ [sic] because it is political rather than pretty, and most buyers want ‘pretty’ paintings. But there were quite a few non-political paintings in the show (e.g. by Boniface Maina and Pascal Chuma), while quite a few were visually appealing (e.g.Tabitha wa Thuku’s Rescue Mission and the two by Anne Mwiti) and several were thought provoking (e.g. Oliver Okoth’s Who Do You Believe and Moses Nyawanda’s The Occult) though not necessarily political. So while the title of this show seems like a misnomer, the content is substantial and quite saleable! Plus it’s a good first public initiative of the Kenya Visual Artists Network since its election of officials. And I hope it won’t be the last. Among other artists in the show are Martin Onyis, Michael Musyoka and Victor Mutali Meanwhile, this coming Sunday, the Red Hill Gallery will open a Retrospective Exhibition of Justus Kyalo’s Art. This past weekend, OneOff Gallery opened a fascination show of paintings by Anthony Okello;Mbuthia Maina’s and Andrew Njoroge’s Collaborative Art is still at Kuona Trust, and Alliance Francaise hosts a ‘Nyrobi in Pictures’ exhibition from June 5th.

NIGERIAN ART FROM NSUKKA VIA UNIVERSITY OF BAYREUTH TO GOETHE INSTITUTE

http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/The-best-of-Nigerian-art-comes-to-Goethe/-/1248928/1867508/-/135ru0gz/-/index.html////PIONEERING NIGERIAN ART COMES TO GOETHE VIA BAYREUTH By margaretta wa gacheru. PUBLISHED IN BUSINESS DAILY MAY 31, 2013/// Ulli Beier is the esteemed German scholar who spent most of his life encouraging, documenting and promoting the early ‘schools’ of Nigerian art, both locally and globally. Best known for the work he did in Nigeria around Oshogbo, a city renowned for producing not only visual artists like Twins Seven-Seven, Bruce Onobrakpeye and Obiora Udechukwu, but also thespians like Duro Ladipo who’s considered one of Africa’s earliest professional playwrights. But Beier also worked closely with Nsukka artists, a loosely affiliated group who through Beier were associated with the University of Nigeria at Nsukka. It is their art, including pencil drawings and woodcut prints that are currently on display at Goethe Institute’s auditorium up until 7th June. Hand delivered from the Iwalewa-Haus School of Art at Bayreuth University, by the School’s curator, Dr. Ulf Vierke, the exhibition represents only a part of a larger collection of works by Nsukka artists which Beier had donated to Bayreuth. “The Iwalewa Haus was actually founded by Ulli Beier,” explained GI’s Barbara Reich who noted that the Nsukka artists are considered ‘pioneers’ in what Western scholars have defined as ‘the emergent field of contemporary African art and aesthetics.’ In the late 1960s into the 80s, Nsukka painters were among the first artists to serve as social chroniclers and critics of the Biafran War. The pain of that period is reflected in prints by Uzo Ndubisi such as Unknown Soldiers and Our Fallen Heroes which were drawn in 1986, almost twenty years after the war’s end. They reveal, just as Chinea Achebe did in his last memoir, There was a Country, that the Igbo people were not quick to forget the defeat and devastation that they incurred during their failed attempt to secede from the greater Nigeria. One of the most interesting prints in the whole exhibition is one called Barely out of the Whirlwind: Safe Ground by the Ghanaian artist who emigrated to Nsukka early in his career, El Anatsui. What makes the print notable, apart from its appearance as a giant circular scribble with a footprint on top, is that El Anatsui is currently the most acclaimed African artist in the West. That fact is sufficient to make one assume his print is the most valuable in the entire exhibition. Working these days as more of a sculptor and what Kenyans call a ‘junk artist’, El Anatsui’s massive hand-stitched scrap metal wall hangings can currently be found on walls in scores of museums and art centers all across the States and Europe. For instance, in the last year alone, he’s been invited to mount major one-man shows everywhere from New York and Los Angeles to London’s Royal Academy of Art. The Iwalewa Haus of Bayreuth may be less renowned than UK’s Royal Academy, but by Ulli Beier’s inauguration of it in the 1970s with his personal collection of works by Nsukka Artists, he ensured that the Nsukka School and Iwalewa Haus will retain a prominent place for anyone interested in contemporary African art. And like Oshogbo, Nsukka was not a town that only produced visual artists. Where Oshogbo also hatched playwrights and musicians, Nsukka produced poets and musicians like Obiora Udechukwu whose poetry covers one wall at Goethe Institute, illustrated by Kenyan painters Solo Seven and Gor Soudan. The exhibition itself is actually entitled ‘Poetic Line’, referring not only to Nsukka poets and printmakers; it’s a paraphrase of a previous exhibition mounted at the National Museum of African Art called ‘The Poetics of Line: Seven Artists of the Nsukka Group’, curated by an American anthropologist, Professor Simon Ottenberg, who like Ulli Beier devoted a big chunk of his life to working closely with pioneering Nigerian artists like those of Nsukka and Oshogbo. One of the most interesting features of Nsukka art that gets less attention is the fact that it’s inspired by uli art, the traditional wall and body painting of the Igbo, which is entirely the work of Igbo women. I don’t believe there is one woman artist in Poetic Line show, which is unfortunate, especially as it was women who made the natural pigments and collectively retained all the traditional uli symbols and designs. I wonder if this was an omission of Ulli Beier or was the Nsukka School just ‘gendered’ in favor of men? Either way, the show is a fascinating preview to a Pan-African exhibition coming up later this year, curated by the Nigerian art consultant Tosin Iroko and highlighting the implicit connection between East and West African art.

INVESTMENT BANKER VISHAL AGARWAL LEADS BY EXAMPLE; SAYS CORPORATES NEED TO SUPPORT KENYAN ARTS

http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Deal-maker-sees-money-and-more-in-Kenyan-art/-/1248928/1867304/-/ib21tmz/-/index.html///DEAL MAKER SEES MONEY AND MORE IN KENYAN ART By Margaretta wa Gacheru: PUBLISHED May 31, 2013 in Business Daily/// From college intern in Washington, DC to corporate partner in Nairobi, Vishal Agarwal’s ascent up the corporate ladder began several years before Price Waterhouse merged with Cooper to become the giant transnational corporation that it is today. “There are 20 partners in PWC Kenya alone, 10,000 around the world based in 150 countries,” said the Bombay-born, American-trained partner who took time out from PWC for almost a decade in the 1990’s to become a successful investment banker whose line of work took him all around the world. “And everywhere I went, I saw African art hanging in international hotels and on corporate walls, yet when I came to Africa, I saw none of it in businesses that I visited. Clearly something was wrong; something needed to change. There was apparently no appreciation for the social commentary of contemporary African art,” said Agarwal, a man who’s spearheading the current drive for corporations to support contemporary East African art. Speaking to Business Daily in his private capacity as a patron of the arts, not as a spokesman for PWC, Agarwal feels passionate about the need for corporations to get behind the Arts in Kenya, just as he has seen corporates do in other parts of the world. Having only come to Kenya in 2004, Agarwal says he is awe of the incredible dynamism and economic development that he has seen all across the region in the past nine years. “This is clearly Africa’s time,” he said, noting that what’s happening all across sub-Saharan Africa is extraordinary. But as he has gotten better acquainted with the region, he has been troubled by the terrible gap that he has seen between the rapid economic development and the abject neglect of African culture and the arts. What he has also disturbed him is the fact that so much invaluable African art has been flown out of the region to cultural capitals in Europe and the States. He attributes what he calls this ‘flight of [African] art’ to the fact that there are so few local patrons who fully appreciate what’s going on culturally, aesthetically and even socially in the realm of contemporary African art. “The artists are not being promoted, yet all over the world it’s the artists who are the social commentators, who see what’s going on in society when others don’t,” said Agarwal, whose firm just recently sponsored a major group exhibition of abstract art that featured eight Kenyan artists together with three ex-patriot artists who’ve been Kenyan residents for many years. Curated by the Circle Art Agency, the showcase of the exhibition was the ground floor of PWC’s brand new building in Westlands, in the expansive and high-ceiling’ed wing known as Delta Corner. [The high-rise twin towers were actually built a few years back, but PWC acquired them late last year and officially moved in early this year.] “The exhibition opened to the public on a Friday night, but the evening before, we had invited most of the corporate CEOs in Kenya to a private showing of the artwork,” he said. Hoping to lead by example, his firm just recently commissioned one East African artist, El Tayeb Dawalbeit, to create a two-storied installation work of art that will stand solidly in the main lobby of the PWC building. The lobby in itself is a work of modern art. Made out of glass and steel with solid marble floors, everything about this impressive high-vaulted space bespeaks PWC’s corporate power, cosmopolitan spirit and cultural sophistication. Yet Agarwal has mixed feeling about the lobby’s slightly impersonal architectural design as it could easily be transplanted to any global city in the world and it could easily fit right in. “But what’s the point of working in a space that could just as well be found in London or New York?” asked Agarwal rhetorically. Noting that nowadays, corporate employees often spend more of their lives at work than in their homes, he felt compelled to commission an East African artist to create a piece of public art that could communicate a more localized mood and texture to both PWC employees as well as to the public at large. “Our idea is for the international to meet the local right here where the people may see how art can provide a social commentary on the times. [The commission] is meant to enable the public to appreciate the way art can reflect social realities and also be socially relevant. The selection of El Tayeb’s art was by no means a haphazard affair. On the contrary, Agarwal worked closely with the three cofounders of Circle Art, Danda Jaroljmek, Fiona Fox and Arvind Vohara, to organize an art competition involving local artists who were asked to provide a written proposal stating the conceptual background of artwork they each wanted to design and install at PWC. “We received a hundred proposals and we short listed nine out of which we selected El Tayeb’s,” said Agarwal who particularly likes the fact that El Tayeb’s proposal includes a multitude of colorful faces which will be set within two tall three dimensional ‘frames’ which he’s constructing from recycled wooden boxes which ideally will make a powerful commentary on the universal value of human beings, irrespective of their color, creed, gender or social standing. The competition itself was a creative catalyst which propelled Kenyan artists like the nine finalists, (namely Dennis Muraguri, Gor Soudan, Paul Onditi, Justus Kyalo, Xavier Verhoest, Anthony Okello, Sidney Mang’ong’o, Sam Hopkins, and of course El Tayeb) to come up with ingenious new ideas which they had to construct in miniature as well as explain conceptually. “My feeling is that artists are social commentators; their work reflects the times in which we live, and I want people, including our staff, to see the social value of the art.” But if Agarwal feels compelled to claim that corporates in Kenya have “a calling” to support the Arts, he adds that he is not simply being ‘philanthropic’ per se. “Contemporary African art is a bloody good investment,” he says. In fact, PriceWaterhouseCooper has been investing in Kenyan art for several years, according the firm’s resident art consultant Chou Sio. A qualified architect by training in the States, Chou not only helped re-design the public spaces of the PWC Building, a process that got underway soon after she came on board at PWC and shortly after the company’s partners decided to acquire the tallest Twin Towers in Westlands for KSh4 billion. She is also the one responsible back in 2007 for selecting a number of exceptional works of art by Kenyan contemporary artists, including Peterson Kamwathi, Yassir Ali, Anthony Okello, Elkana Ong’esa, Kotal Otieno, Tabitha wa Thuku and Jimnah Kimani, all of whose works are on the top floors of the PWC building. Confirmation of the fact that acquiring Kenyan art is an excellent investment came to Agarwal just moments before we met in his penthouse offices of PWC. He’d received word from Circle Art’s Danda Jaroljmek, who had just returned from London where the art of eight Kenyan artists had all been sold at the prestigious Bonham’s Art Auction, and all sold had sold for substantially higher prices than even she had anticipated. Among the artists whose works sold well at the annual London auction were two whose art PWC already owns, namely Peterson Kamwathi and Anthony Okello. “Of course, we paid a fraction of what those paintings are worth today,” observed Chou who visited all the artists’ studios before she presented her suggestions for the partners to finally approve which works they would like to acquire. Today, you will find Chou’s choice selections conspicuously hung in the lounges and open-air offices at PWC. “What’s the point of hanging paintings from other places when we are in Kenya and the artists have creative commentaries to make about our society today,” Agarwal said. Being an investment banker as well as a PWC partner, Agarwal’s main line of work involves ‘mergers and acquisitions’ (“I’m the resident ‘deal maker’ at PWC,” he confessed, noting he was intimately involved in designing the deal to acquire the PWC twin towers.) But his work also involves consulting with PWC clients and advising them on how best to maximize their profits; so that today, he doesn’t shy away from encouraging clients to consider their own corporate social responsibility (CSR) and to see how supporting local artists can be seen as part of their CSR. “Recently an international client came in to discuss their building a rural hospital as a service to that community,” Agarwal recalls. “I asked them what they intended to put on their hospital walls and I encouraged them to consider acquiring art by local artists as a way of supporting the arts.” Agarwal is aware that many Kenyan-based corporations don’t know much about the Kenya art scene or the fact that it is thriving though probably not in the same public or private spaces that members of the corporate community frequent. Nonetheless, he feels keenly that the dynamic development of contemporary art in Kenya will depend largely upon public and private investors cooperating to advance the arts in Kenya and support an incredibly creative community that he is happy to showcase at his PWC offices. Unfortunately, the ground floor ‘gallery’ space that he lent to the Circle Art Agency to mount their amazing Abstract Art exhibition early this month at Delta Corner will soon be transformed into a restaurant. But we local art lovers can only hope the new tenants will take up the ‘calling’ that Agarwal has sent out to the rest of the Kenya corporate community – to take seriously that their ‘corporate social responsibility’ can easily include supporting Kenyan art; and when they do, they will quickly find they have made not merely a philanthropic gesture, they will have made an excellent investment as well. For just as the African economy is on a roll and expanding rapidly, so is the value and the vital creative juices of the African artists as well. So when a man like Agarwal (who knows a ‘good deal’ when he sees it) says now’s the time to support the African arts, one would do well to sit up and listen and also become a patron of African contemporary art.

JOHN KIRIAMITI: THE BACKSTORY OF THE MAN WHO WROTE & LIVED 'MY LIFE IN CRIME'

KIRIAMITI: REFORMED BUT STILL WITH HIS 'EAR TO THE GROUND' By Margaretta wa Gacheru: Published in Daily Nation, DN2 May 28, 2013/// When My Life in Crime first came out in 1984, its author John Kiriamiti was still in jail, serving the maximum sentence for robbery with violence, 28 years. It was a crime (or rather crimes) well documented in the novel that was to become an instant best-seller and one that continues to be top of the charts. Indeed, despite the pundits complaining that Kenyans do not read, the public quickly swept the bookstore shelves for Kiriamiti’s debut novel. Asking the author what he thought was the instant appeal of his book—a book soon to be made into a film by Janet...and Neil Schell, Kiriamiti said it could’ve been curiosity and the fact that violent crime was on the rise in Kenya yet the press was barely covering it; but here was someone revealing criminals’ dirty secrets from an insider’s point of view. “It could also have to do with the simplicity of the writing,” he suggested. But to me, it also has to do with the fact that Kiriamiti is a great storyteller whose protagonist, Jack Zollo, seems to be writing a first-hand account of his experiences, struggles and illegal schemes to not simply survive but thrive ‘by any means necessary’, including bank robbery with violence. Kiriamiti wasn’t aware of the book’s impact on the outside world when it initially hit the streets. “I was busy teaching English to inmates,” said the son of two school teachers. It wasn’t until he got thrown into solitary confinement that he discovered his book was a best seller, albeit one that disturbed the powers-that-be so much they had to stick him in solidarity for several weeks. Yet Kiriamiti had been a model inmate prior to one of his students’ squealing to the authorities that it was he who wrote the book that painted an unflattering picture of Kenya’s penal system. He had been such a humble, polite and all round ‘nice guy’ that he’d managed to persuade the prison welfare officer at Kamiti Prison to let inmates attend classes like the one he would teach twice a day. He also managed to get books allowed into the prison for inmates to read. “It was in prison that I started reading all of James Hadley Chase, Robert Ludlum and Peter Cheney,” said Kenya’s leading crime writer who had only made it halfway through Form One at Prince of Wales Secondary in the early Sixties before he hit the streets and got into his infamous life of crime. “I was actually expelled in Form One for getting into fights with the white boys who still were dominant in the school [which subsequently became Nairobi School] and who weren’t keen on having to share their facilities with Africans like me,” he confessed. Having been kicked out of school at age 15, Kiriamiti was only 20 by the time he first went to prison. “Initially, I was very depressed, but soon I met older inmates who’d been there 12 years or more, and they assured me my life wasn’t over. I’d still be a relatively young man when I got out. And so I decided to get to work. I decided not to waste any time. So like the African American revolutionary Malcolm X, Kiriamiti chose to use his time in jail to educate himself. He even studied Journalism by correspondence, having befriended one of the wardens who had all the course materials and shared them freely with him. “That warden was actually one of my students in the English class that I taught,” he recalls. Kiriamiti made friends with another warden who used to slip him paper, pencils and pens, and also help him smuggle out chapters of his first book to his older sister on the outside. “It was my sister, Connie Wanjiku, who handed the completed manuscript [of My Life in Crime] to Dr. [Henry] Chakava [of East African Educational Publishers] who in turn passed it on to Ngugi [wa Thiong’o] to read. ”It was Ngugi who actually told Chakava to publish the book,” he added. Kiriamiti only stayed in solitary for a few weeks. Then after 13 years [rather than 28] he was released and subsequently inundated with media attention—an experience quite unlike that of the ex-convict in his fourth novel, Son of Fate. That book, which Kiriamiti claims is his favorite of the six he has written thus far (with a seventh, entitled City Car Jackers, on the way), recounts the trials and tribulations of the ex-jailbird Adams Wamathina, who truly wants to reform and come clean, but finds social forces incessantly working against him until finally, he gets an unexpected break, which unfolds in what the author calls the sequel to Son of Fate entitled The Sinister Trophy. In any case, Kiriamiti didn’t enjoy the limelight for long. “I was picked up and thrown back into prison, supposedly for being a member of Mwakenya,” recalls Kiriamiti who doesn’t conceal the fact that he’d been embittered for having to endure three more years inside as a consequence of Moi’s paranoia. His only consolation was that he met many of his old friends in prison, many who he claimed were far more clever crooks than he would ever be. “The only advantage I had over them was that I could communicate my story in my writing, but they knew far more about criminality in Kenya than I ever will,” says Kiriamiti, who notes that many of them were either ex-Army or ex-police who were members of secret networks which they continued to participate in despite their being behind bars! There’s little doubt that the writer’s years on the streets and in prison, rubbing shoulders with criminals gave him extraordinary access to otherwise ‘privileged’ information which would become fodder for his novels, including the three [My Life in Crime, My Life in Prison and Millie’s Story] which will be re-shaped into a screenplay by Nell Schell, appropriately entitled My Life in Crime. My Life in Prison was also written clandestinely by Kiriamiti while in prison. “It was only after the death of one of the wardens [at Naivasha Maximum] that I couldn’t write for some time. During that crackdown, several inmates actually died and over a hundred were maimed for life,” he recalls. The gruesome murder of the prison warden and the bloody aftermath are graphically portrayed in My Life in Prison and are likely to be integral elements of the film. When he was first released from prison in 1984, Kiriamiti went straight to work writing for Sam Kahiga and the late Brian Tetley at Men Only. “Sam in the one who edited My Life in Prison, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s the best edited of all my books,” said Kiriamiti who was also a close friend and colleague of the late Wahome ‘Whispers’ Mutahi during that brief period before he got thrown back in jail. Released on February 12, 1990, (“The same day that Nelson Mandela was released and Robert Ouko assassinated”), Kiriamiti admits he “was a man who wanted revenge.” As a consequence, he went looking for his old criminal buddies and seriously contemplated returning to a life of crime. “What saved me was my wife, Julian,” confessed Kiriamiti. “She’s the reason I changed completely,” he adds, admitting he used to take his future wife out on dates in stolen cars, “but she didn’t know it at the time.” Meeting Julian in Bahati through his old friend, Father Grol, Kiriamiti was working with street children at the time. “Do you believe I married an ex-nun!” he said, clearly amused by the irony of his good fortune. Now the father of three, girls, his first born is in university, the second about to go there and the third still in secondary. Clearly delighted to describe himself as a farmer after having moved back to his portion of the family farm in Murang’a, Kiriamiti actually stays mainly in Murang’a town where he works as a full-time journalist who founded and edits his own monthly newspaper, The Sharpener, which circulates throughout Murang’a county. He also has a popular monthly column called Ear to the Ground. But in the coming days, Kiriamiti won’t easily avoid again becoming a celebrity, now that his film is about to be made. Already the film has generated a buzz, both because he’s recently been on radio and TV talking about it and because of the casting which the film’s producers have already promised Kiriamiti’s part to a Nigerian star called Jim Iyke. “They claim it’s because they want to market the movie to a Pan-African audience and Iyke is well known in West Africa, especially in Nigeria and Ghana,” said Viraj Sikand, who volunteers in Kibera and who recently met Iyke when he was touring Kenya while filming a segment for his reality show. But already, Kenyans who have heard about the Nigerian are up in arms about the idea of not choosing a Kenyan to play their favorite criminal’s role. Kenyans don’t care that Iyke is a Nollywood superstar. I have heard comments from critics on the street whose biggest complaint is that Kiriamiti is an iconic Kenyan who deserves to be represented by a fellow Kenyan. One of the most salient complaints comes from those who question how easily this ‘super-star’ is going to learn Sheng, which has to be an integral element of the film. “The producers think he will be okay speaking in English,” said Kiriamiti who has tried to dissuade Janet and Nell from going with a non-Kenyan. “They claim he can easily pick up Sheng if he hangs out with me for three months before the film shoots begin,” adds the writer who agrees that by choosing a non-Kenyan, the producers are sending a wrong message about the creative capacity of Kenyan actors, many of whom I know could easily play Jack Zollo with relish and the necessary charisma. Kiriamiti recalls how much he enjoyed a film like Nairobi Half Life, although he says the scriptwriters got a few things wrong. But as far as the casting is concerned, he thought it was excellent, especially the characters of Oti and Mwas. As for an outsider’s ability to pick up on Kiriamiti’s back-story, that might not be hard if he reads all the novels, although the writer’s life is so tightly woven into the warp and woof of Kenyan contemporary culture, Iyke will have to do more than reading to get the knowledge as well as the emotional ambiance of Kenyan everyday life, especially life on the back streets. And if he starts now, reading all of Kiriamiti’s novels along with all of those by writers who have influenced him the most, writers like Mwangi Gicheru whose Over the Bridge was the catalyst that got Kiriamiti writing in the first place, he might catch up a bit. “I love Mwangi’s book but I realized despite his writing about crime, I knew a whole lot more about it than he did, so his book became my incentive to start writing myself. And since then, Mwangi has become one of my best friends.” Today, no one seeing this slender, unassuming journalist walking on Nairobi streets would suspect that this is a man who, after Ngugi, Maillu, and Gicheru, earns more from his book royalties than most people would ever suspect. “People claim that writing books can’t earn someone a good living, but I wonder how many books those people have written and how many they have sold,” quipped Kiriamiti who is happy to encourage his fellow Kenyans to write about their lives just as he has. Whether they will be as successful is another question, but certainly the man deserves to be seen as an inspiration to the tens of thousands who read and re-read his books and feel they know the man intimately.

Phoenix Players Spin a Male Fantasy in FLORINDA Hotel

FANTASY PLUS REALISM MAKE FLORINDA HOTEL BOTH CONTEMPORARY AND COMPLEX By margaretta wa Gacheru, Published in Saturday Nation, May 25th// Latin American writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez invented a literary genre known as magical realism. And I’d like to suggest that the guy (and it was definitely a guy) who wrote Florinda Hotel, the play that opened last Wednesday staged by Phoenix Players, ‘invented’ (or at least engaged in) another genre that I’d like to call fantastical realism. (l-r) Brian Munene, Martin Githinji, Sahil Gada and Shiviske Shivisi in Florinda Hotel at Phoenix Theatre// The reason is it’s a pure fantasy in this day and age for a wife to be ‘okay’ with her husband having a mistress, especially one that he maintains in South B. Sometime back, polygamy was the norm in Africa and wives had no say as to how many or who became their co-wives. But that was before Western culture came on the scene, and wives finally had some say about the kind of family they wanted and about the equity they now expected in intimate relationships, like marriage. So when George (Martin Githinji), the owner-manager of Florinda Hotel, tells his buddy Aramis (Brian Munene) that his wife Seraphine (Nice Githinji) is ‘okay’ with his having a mistress named Yvette (Veronica Waceke), one has to suspect the playwright is either creating a fantasy about wives who are not bothered when their spouses’ sleeping around, or writing about the Dark Ages when wives were never consulted or even informed about the man’s concubines. George (Martin Githinji) with Yvette (Veronica Waceke) and Aramis (Brian Munene) What we do know is that Seraphine is fed up with all the domestic double duties she is stuck with, working at Florinda Hotel with her spouse. For not only does she have to cook, clean, waitress and serve all the guests who visit the hotel, like the two ‘foreigners’ played by Shiviske Shivis and Sahil Gada. She is stuck doing comparable duties for George who also relies on his wife to keep the hotel accounts and regularly balance the books. Seraphine is a restless, frustrated soul who clearly wants her freedom. She takes her angst out on George who doesn’t connect the dots to think maybe she is not okay with having a ‘kept woman’ in her husband’s life. Seraphine (Nice Githinji) is fed up with her life at Florinda Hotel// But even if she weren’t feeling exploited and bored with the tedium of domestic work, she does feel undervalued and overworked. So when George suggests that she take a holiday from the hotel, she jumps at the chance. Never mind that George’s pal Aramis initiated the idea since he sees that both wife and concubine are bored stiff with their lives. Yvette yearns to live the domestic bliss that she believes Seraphine has had. Meanwhile, Seraphine, wanting a change, feels good about living by herself even though it’s in the rented flat that George got for Yvette. But the life-swapping of the women turns out to be a total disaster. It gets especially unsettling when George’s Aunt Marie (Allison Gibwini) shows up and meets Yvette who she believes is Seraphine. What brings out the ‘realism’ of the fantastical realism is the way the women come together to solve the immediate problem at hand. I won’t tell what they decide, but that decision is what makes Florinda Hotel a show that ends up being quite contemporary and ironically quite fun! Allison Gibsini (left) as Aunt Marie arrives on the scene to turn whole play upside down.// Aunt Marie’s arrival is the game-changer since she’s not a fool and quickly sees there’s something strange about this utterly undomesticated ‘Seraphine’. Whether the ‘co-wives’ will ever truly return to life as it was before the switch is an open-ended issue; but all obviously gain a deeper understanding of what they want and need in their lives. And it all happens at the Florinda Hotel, which is directed by Nick Njache

Abstract Art by Kenyans at PWC Building

ABSTRACT ART SHOW BY KENYANS, A FIRST AT DELTA CORNER OF NEW PWC SKYSCRAPER By Margaretta wa Gacheru. Published May 24, 2013 in Business Daily, Nairobi The ‘pop-up’ exhibition of abstract art that opened a week ago at the Delta Corner of the brand new PriceWaterhouseCooper building in Westlands was entitled Xtract * Subtract * Abstract. But I could just as easily have called the group exhibition of eight Kenyan and Kenya-resident artists Never Before, Never Again. The reasons are obvious: Nairobi has never before seen an art exhibition wholly committed to exposing the power and painterly genius of abstract art. We’ve never before seen a serious collection [curated by the newly formed Circle Art Agency] of non-representational art by Kenyans Justus Kyalo, Sidney Mang’ong’o, Emily Odongo, Michael Wafula and Peter Walala as well as Kenyan residents Jason Corder, Sibylla Martin and Xavier Verhoest. 'City Rhythms' by Emily Odongo,part the 'pop-up' exhibition of Abstract Art at new PWC Tower.// Nor has Nairobi ever seen a whole exhibition situated in such a spacious light-filled setting, occupying an entire ground floor of the brand new PWC building. The Corner was especially conducive to exposing the imaginative appeal of abstract art, a genre not often associated with Kenyan contemporary art. But the show only ran for a week, which is why Circle Art nick-named it a ‘Pop-Up’ exhibition. “We plan to find more spaces like this in future and hold short ‘pop-up’ exhibitions in order to grab the public’s interest,” said Circle Art cofounder Fiona Fox. Her partner cofounders are Danda Jaroljmek and Arvind Vohara. But unfortunately, a show like Xtract-Subtract-Abstract will never be seen in Nairobi again. Why? It’s because in a few weeks, the space will be transformed into a restaurant. The exhibition might go elsewhere, but the impact Circle Art achieved by hanging monumental paintings in this wide-open, high-ceilinged space won’t be easily staged again. Nonetheless, Circle Art fulfilled its goal of introducing Nairobians to the elegant appeal of abstract art, which until recently has primarily been the preserve of Westerners such as Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollack.

Collaborative Creativity at Kuona with Mbuthia & Njoroge

COLLABORATIVE CREATIVITY AT KUONA By Margaretta wa Gacheru Published in Business Daily,May 24, 2013 It’s an understatement to say that Mbuthia Maina’s and Andrew Njoroge’s current exhibition of creative works is something out of the ordinary. Mbuthia Maina's collaborative art and Andrew Njoroge's 'Girl of my Dreams' For one thing the show isn’t stationary; it’s been in motion ever since it first opened two weeks ago in Kibera at Gor Soudan’s studio, a place nicknamed the Jolly Guys Social Club. Then the artists shifted strategically to the gallery at Kuona Trust so they could share their art with a wider audience. It was also to see how the work would evolve since the show has gotten increasingly interactive and collaborative. In fact, the most striking feature of Mbuthia’s and Njoroge’s exhibition is that it reflects the creative energies of so many local and international characters. This is partly due to the fact that both men are part-time art teachers: they instruct and inspire children (from age seven up to 17) in Kibera and have done so ever since the post-election violence of 2007—8 struck slums like Kibera with such mindless and life-threatening malevolence. Mbuthia has been working with around 30 children every weekend over the last five years. Initially, there was some donor support for the project, but that quickly dried up. Still the former philosophy major from Egerton University continued to work weekends with the little ones. Initially, the workshops were based at Maasai Mbili art studio but then shifted with the artist to Jolly Guys where a few of the children still come every day after school to draw and create, using whatever materials they can find around the place. The artistic expression of three of those little people (aged 7 through 10) is quite conspicuous on Mbuthia’s side of Kuona’s mini-gallery. In fact, all of his multi-media art have the children’s work at the heart of it. “All of the drawings are theirs,” said the teacher who’s well known for using found materials and other non-traditional media to make his eclectic art. In this case, he uses drawings that the children took home but somehow got tossed in the trash. These got collected by Mbuthia who then incorporated them into his larger art project. Mbuthia affixed the children's art onto cardboard boxes to create a hanging snake-like effect. In one sense, his creative contribution to this show is his choice of mountings and frames which make each piece a collaborative event. For instance, most of the drawings by either Steven Juma, 7, Savior Omondi, 10 or Stacy Buda, 10, are affixed by Mbuthia onto either dismantled cardboard cartons or charred Styrofoam blocks or raffia grass. The synthesis is stunning, especially as the Teacher adds color, shape, texture and design to each of the drawings, some of which were once no more than crumpled scraps of paper. Njoroge (no relation to the African Colours A.N.) has also been working with Kibera youth (like Shado, 17, whose style is quite mature and reminiscent of Jackson Pollack’s spatter-paint style). However, he came to the slum project a few years after Mbuthia since he’d been away in the States studying interior design and animation in Georgia and New Jersey. What brought him back to Kenya was one trip to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. “MOMA had a profound impact on me,” he said. “It made me want to come back home to Kenya and to concentrate on my art.” By that time, his artwork was not just design-related. He had come to love animation and had learned the basics after shifting from Savannah School of Art and Design to the Jersey City University. “Growing up, I’d always loved animation, but it wasn’t until I’d gotten to the States that I realized I could do it myself.” Njoroge came home in 2006 and went straight to Shangtao Media College to learn more of the fine point of animation. One will see a sampling of his ‘cartoons’ which he co-constructed with another multi-media artist, Jackie Karuti. In this show, he also experiments with multi-media and tries his hand at several genres, including surrealism and impressionism. The mini-gallery at Kuona Trust where one panel has drawings by Stacy, 10, Simon, 10 and Steven, 7, all art students of Mbuthia and on the left hand wall is a painting by Andrew's student, Shado, 17. One of the more conspicuous collaborator in this multifaceted exhibition is the Japanese artist, Yukiharo Taguchi whose specialty is something called ‘stop motion video’. In Kenya with the Nairobi-based Nishio Art Workshop from Japan, the Mohawk haired videographer walked into Kuona on the day Mbuthia and Njoroge were putting up their show (with assistance from Gor Soudan). Instantly, he not only got involved hanging the exhibition; he also began shooting the process. Thus his ‘stop motion video’ will become one more collaborative aspect of this curiously engaging show which will run through the end of the month.