A group exhibition by Sasa Fellows: Joel Lukhovi, Atieno Sachy, Precious Narotso, Wallace Juma & Sammy Mutinda, curated by Niklas Obermann.

In this exhibition the five artists’ works are diverse in both theme and articulation, but are also bound together by some commonality, as the title of the show implies. The year-long residency journey that the artists embarked upon shows in the complexity of their work, grappling with challenging themes while expanding their processes beyond that which might be framed and hung on a wall. 

Gallery view including works by Juma Wallace, foreground

On entering the exhibition space, we first encounter lumpen resin forms and a deteriorating wooden bed, which on examination one sees is laid with long, sharp-edged shards of glass. On closer inspection it is seen that soil, rocks and other bits of natural detritus underlay these glass strips. The resin pieces are in ochre tones and also contain grasses, shells, etc., variously resembling pieces of a sea-bed, mud stopped mid-flow or other geology. This is Juma Wallace’s work, individual pieces that form an installation together, drawing on his upbringing by Lake Victoria and focusing on “what happens in the waters of Lake Victoria and how this impacts the lives of the people around it: their health, economy, social activities, and creativity”. The pieces seem as if they may have been dredged from the lake. In the low-lit space, the installation feels dream-like; like the remains of a civilization, or perhaps a representation of a time before that, when the earth was more peaceful.

Wilt, Precious Narotso. Image by Niklas Obermann.

Precious Narotso’s installation Wilt has a dream-like quality too, but one filled with melancholy. The piece forms an abandoned living room where time has stood still. The floor and shelves are covered with dried up leaves, the sofa is shabby, there is an out-of-date boombox and a TV from another era that is playing a cartoon created by the artist, but drained of its original colour. Dead branches dangle from the ceiling. The same cartoon as on the TV is also projected onto the wall, this time in colour. Music plays, creating a nostalgic soundscape evocative of coastal rhythms known in Narotso’s childhood. Memories of what had been. For the artist, all of this is representative of her childhood, marred by desertion by her father. The piece “explores the complex emotional terrain of grieving someone who is still alive” and years of trauma-healing where time was arrested, as a place of memories, some elevated and some suppressed. 

Now You See, Joel Lukhovi (rear)

Ideas of loss are echoed in Joel Lukhovi’s work, comprising reproductions of archival family photographs from the 1990s, many of which are incomplete – decaying, disintegrating, fading. Embodying a similar atmosphere as Narotso & Wallace’s works. The images look ethereal and of a more distant past than they actually are. In his research, Lukhovi looked at photographic archives. He is interested in the family photograph as documentation of personal narratives. However, he notes that the narratives shown in photos of this period, when casual photography was rare, are constructed. People wear their best clothes and pose in front of prized possessions, not everyday items. Thus the photos can be seen as an erasure of their reality. Lukhovi displays the “semi-destructed image…forcing us to ask: what is the true meaning of a picture? Do pictures die? How can we push back against generations of lost photo archives?”

Interior of Light and Voices of Creation, Sammy Mutinda

In the centre of the room sits a large scale wooden cube. It is covered in sinuous carvings recognizable as Sammy Mutinda’s mark-making, which we normally see in his woodcut prints. Walking around the box to the far side we find a curtained door leading inside. Once inside we see layered references to Mutinda’s themes: creation as both an act of making and as a sensory experience. The interior of the box is strung with multicoloured strings of lights, looped through the space, mirroring the imagery on the outside of the box. As the lights flash different RGB colours they highlight the coloured lines of the scribbled images on the walls that appear withing that spectrum, each setting illuminating a subtly discrete illustration. Set to a soundscape which begins as a susurration and raises to a roar, Mutinda’s work invites us to “engage with the act of creation as something beyond the physical”.

Installation view Fabrics of Resilience, Sachy Atieno

Fabrics of Resilience by Sachy Atieno uses the lens of kanga fabrics, cut into pieces, layered and interwoven with jute coffee sacks, tie-dye, batik and plastics to speak about the invisibility of women’s work – this also a loss, a part of society that is hidden, not from embarrassment but because in its mundanity it remains devalued and therefore unseen. As a whole the installation is aesthetically pleasing, full of the bright colours of kanga and decorative patterns on the coffee sacks. As you spend more time gazing, you discover the ragged edges, the plastic attachments and the cunningly hidden paintings of women at a task that many would not think of as work – carrying babies wrapped onto their backs – yet, reminding you that childcare is work, physically, emotionally and mentally. Atieno says, “I am reconnecting with my roots while exploring how kanga transcends its traditional role and becomes a broader canvas for conversations around women’s labour and identity”.

The Sasa Fellowship is a new initiative founded by the Goethe-Institut in collaboration with Dr. Onyango Oketch, Ato Malinda and Jepkorir Rose. It is a year-long programme developed in response to the lack of any MFA programme here in Kenya. As well as equipping the participating artists with new skills and theoretical knowledge, the programme aims to be a platform for experimentation, allowing the artists to work outside the restraints of time and resources and to produce art on their own terms. 

The artists have been very successful in pushing their individual boundaries, cultivating and expanding the sphere of their work, guided by discussions and critiques with their mentors as well as among themselves. Here we are allowed a glimpse of the sophisticated work that the Kenyan art world is capable of nurturing and producing when not constrained by the impetus of market sales.

The Ties That Bind is at the Goethe-Institut through 28 May. The Goethe-Institut is closed on Sundays. 

The following programme of workshops & events will take place in conjunction with the exhibition:

Friday 16 May | 3 – 6pm | Let There Be – Woodcarving with Sammy Mutinda

Wednesday 21 May | 6 – 8pm | Artist Talk: Sammy Mutinda, Sachy Atieno, Wallace Juma

See Also
“Behind the Bars” – and exhibition by Ndung’u Mbithi

Wednesday 21 May | 8 – 9pm | Performance of Bitter Currants (dance choreography interpretation) by Sue Kambua

Thursday 22 May | 3 – 6pm | Histories at Noon – Photo Album Workshop with Joel Lukhovi

Thursday 29 May | 7pm | The Mist | The Clearing (weekly radio & in person show) with Bizi Bingi & Nartoso

Sign up to the workshops via @goetheinstitut_nairobi link in bio. 

Follow the artists & curator on Instagram:

@squilahartist
@pndraws
@wallace_juma
@sachiegrandd
@lukhovi
@smasvanar