When you walk into Munyu Space you are faced with a pile of chairs, tumbled in a heap, as if thrown there. The installation looks destructive or forsaken, as if they have all been discarded, perhaps violently. One might think of Doris Salcedo’s works. Salcedo often employs chairs, in large aggregations or singly, suggesting a human presence – even an entire community – that has been damaged beyond repair.
Continuing to the second room of this underground space, we see two-dimensional depictions of chairs – intriguingly the images are formed through weaving, an unusual medium for a male artist. Still, there’s the chair, sitting symbolically vacant, looking forlorn.
I was reading concepts of loneliness in the works, of abandon, of self-destruction. Then I sat down with the artist to talk about his intentions. I said to Mbithi “Tell me about chairs”. His response was shockingly honest; he invoked his alter ego “chair kicker”:
So the “chair kicker” comes in as a very dark explanation. For you to hang yourself, to kill yourself, you have to kick a chair from underneath your feet. And that’s why the weaving works are made with the rope, and there’s a chair in between. Half the work of the chairs is the idea of suicide, but not doing it, so I’m still here.”
Although a young artist, Mbithi’s work speaks fluently in the visual language of vulnerability, pain, and endurance. His art is not a solution to suffering but a mirror to it—a complex, layered meditation on the contradiction of living with the desire not to.
Mbithi’s openness about mental health is striking. Diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety, he was prescribed medication and uses therapy as tools for healing. He has transformed his internal experiences into art. A blog documenting his journey provides raw, honest insights into mental health treatment, challenging stigma and encouraging dialogue, as does his exhibition.
Mbithi was drawn to rope, particularly sisal, by his thoughts of suicide, thinking of ropes as nooses. He used that sisal fibre to create woven images of the chair that he envisaged kicking over (but didn’t). Ultimately, he found weaving to be a place of meditation and a process that carried him through difficult times.
I tell myself, let me do this piece, then I see where I’ll be at when it’s done, when I’m done, maybe a month later… I’m in a different headspace. It’s so slow, it’s such a slow process, it’s kind of a meditation and a therapy”.
Without realizing it, Mbithi was invoking a cultural tradition from his Kamba background. Only after embarking on weaving pieces did he discover that Kambaland is a large producer of sisal and is the home of kiondo basket weaving.
Other pieces in the exhibition allude to abuse of alcohol and to debt, places that a person suffering from depression might find themselves. An installation in the back corner of the gallery, in a room behind metal grillwork, embodies a derelict, collapsed bar. The ground is strewn with discarded bottles and other trash, beneath collapsed countertops. Cigarette butts sit in a bowl.
In the centre of the gallery A4 pages are suspended intriguingly and ephemerally from the ceiling, at eye level. The pages are screenshots of messages from zk-pesa, an instant loan company. The messages, relating to a small loan, only just overdue, become increasingly hostile and threatening.
What might have been a private reflection and personal journey has been transformed into a very public display around the challenging subject of mental health – shame, survival and healing. Mbithi has physically and intellectually woven together aspects of his exploration of his psyche and of the broader societal considerations of mental health, addressing the precarity of his position. He speaks to the isolation of being in that place of desperation, incomprehensible to another person.
Mbithi’s works are textural and visually appealing, the loose weaving enticing the viewer to attempt to mentally untangle the knots to get to the root of what the artist is saying. Through weaving, painting, installation, and object-based assemblage he creates an intimate portrait of a fragile self.
Do the knots represent the tangles that a troubled mind can get into? Or are the woven threads a support that keeps the artist afloat? Keeps him from kicking the chair away.
Ndung’u Mbithi (b. 2000) is a Nairobi based multidisciplinary artist and musician. “Between the Bars” is his first solo exhibition.