Art in Nairobi
The current exhibition at NCAI is a compelling presentation of ideas in progress by three emerging Kenyan artists: Elias Mung’ora, Jared Onyango, and Sandra Wauye. The exhibition is the result of a collaboration between NCAI and the informal residency hive Untethered Magic. These works were created during the artists’ participation in the newly piloted UJUZI residency program.
The UJUZI program is a collaboratively procured alternative learning programme for East African artists that focuses on creative research methodologies and contextual thinking in order to develop conceptual and aesthetic rigour, through research and reflection as well as mentorships and communal critique processes. This is important to note in order to come to the exhibition with the right critical eye. The exhibition not only presents the works produced by the artists but also encompasses the research that informed their practices.
Although the concepts are said to be “in progress”, the works can certainly stand alone as finished pieces. Hung in a creative manner in conjunction with curator Don Handa, the time of process and reflection that the artists spent in the last year’s residency programme is apparent throughout.
Installation view of Jared Onyango’s “People, Rivers and Plastics”, 2024. Image courtesy NCAI.
We enter the gallery to Jared Onyango’s pair of videos nearly exactly mirrored across the room from one another, but for the intersection of twirled ribbons of PET bottles across one video, and their shadows on the projection of the second. Through this research and work, Jared seeks:
an approach to materiality that invites viewers to consider their relationship with consumption and commitment to sustainability in this time of global plastic crisis.
You can see Onyango’s background as a movement artist in the swirling images of colour, which at first are abstract and difficult to identify but come into focus as “Uhuru” bags – those ubiquitous carrier bags which were supposed to be the ecologically better alternative to plastic bags. These bags were collected from the Nairobi River and are being washed for re-use by residents of the informal settlement around it. Onyango has been investigating river pollution, especially that of the Nairobi River, and the communities around Dandora dump site. These works are speaking to not only the bags, but the life and economies of the people and the river as they intertwine around pollution.
“Specimens” by Jared Onyango, 2024, Photographic prints on acrylic. Image courtesy of NCAI.
In the next room, Elias Mung’ora speaks of a topic not often addressed in artworks here in Kenya – the relationship between colonialism and land. Elias has looked at the transformation of a culture, specifically his community from the Kenyan Highlands, and the relationship they have had with the church and the space they inhabited. To do so he has referenced documents from the Scottish Mission Church plus photographs and literature. These have come together with memory maps in a compelling critique of the role of missionaries in Kenya at the turn of the 20th century. In this region it is they who convinced the population of the central Highlands of the superiority of the mission to local culture and taught the local community that they should emulate the Scottish missionaries (and by proxy Europeans) through the written Word (of god).
Installation view “Cleaniness is Next to Godliness” by Elias Mung’ora, 2024. Image by author.
Part of the Scots’ mission was elevating cleanliness, which according the the quotes from documents that Mung’ora presents, included removing the “dirty skin cloths” that people wore and replacing them with European style clothes, thus implying the necessity of the ethnic cleansing of the highland people’s traditions and culture in order to be “civilized” and close to God. This point is illustrated cleverly and visually appealingly with an artwork of books, beautifully crafted out of soap. Mung’ora told me that his investigations were largely centred around his own family
Basically trying to chart the influences of early missionaries and their work during the colonial regime, and also, how that influenced my family and my family’s background, especially our religious background.
The next part of Mung’ora’s research will involve speaking to family members directly to harvest their memories and their feelings. He hopes that his project will spark a curiosity in fellow Kenyans who have grown up in the Church about its role in their own family and communities’ histories.
I’m hoping the audience can find a door or an opening to where they can relate to their own experiences to this work, and perhaps find out things that they didn’t necessarily think about”
Detail of Cleaniness is Next to Godliness by Elias Mung’ora, 2024. Image by author.
Sandra Wauye carries on the conversation around humanity and culture in her richly coloured, lightly sketched paintings of village folk at every-day domestic tasks, always with domestic animals within their tableau. These are deliberately left with an unfinished look to encourage openness, exploration and continuity. Wauye states about her practice “When I create, I think about home—the space or feeling of comfort that we constantly long for in this world of sporadic and never-ending restlessness and loss. I use large brushes to paint in quick, successive strokes and light layers, continually experimenting with colours and light.
“All the Disjointed Bits & Life’s Possible Permutations” (foreground), “Collectively Compositing” (background) by Sandra Wauye
Principally having worked in painting until now, during the residency Wauye expanded her practice to ceramic works. The most striking of these in this exhibition looks like an archaeological excavation of early life forms and super sized seeds emerging from a rolling bed of sandy earth. The plinths of her other ceramic vessels, whose shapes echo those of the smaller “excavation” works, are equally derived from the natural world, constructed of bricks of a light sandy colour and texture.
All my creations are inspired by elements in nature and how everything is interconnected.
In all of these works, Sandra seems to be examining the relationship and similarities between humans and animals, and perhaps proposing the primacy of the natural world as well as encouraging reflection “about our connection to nature, earth and to every living thing that died in the past to make way for the present.”
“Does the Mould Ever Break” 2024, Oil & chalk on canvas, by Sandra Wauye
The interweaving of the themes of the artists is perhaps not accidental as they have been participating in the UJUZI residency together for the past year, having conversations and critiques not only with their mentors but also with one another. The exhibition offers a unique opportunity to witness the evolving artistic processes of Mung’ora, Onyango, and Wauye.