With a dash of fantasy and fiction, Nairobi is born anew

I made my maiden entry into the gates of The Art Space, the art gallery located on Riverside Drive, on Saturday, May 21. Having been opened at the end of 2015, a visit there had been long overdue. And so I got in, like a supplicant finding her way into a shrine.

I was intrigued by the title of the exhibition of paintings, sculpture and photography that was opening up that very day: Nairobi Re-viewed. First, it brought up the question of how are we currently looking at Nairobi? And, secondly, what is it about the way we are looking at the city that calls for review?

To answer the question what comes to mind when you think of and ‘view’ Nairobi? Huruma flats falling, floods, Evans Kidero’s social gaffes, traffic jam, ‘NaiRoberry’, pollution, hustling. By coincidence, earlier in the day before writing this, I stumbled onto a conversation on Facebook led by popular a social media pundit where he had asked who people would vote for as Nairobi’s governor in the next election. More than 800 people had weighed in with their opinions, telling you how central on the agenda the capital city is.

So what is it these artists are telling us about how to look at Nairobi anew?

Well, first off is Denis Muraguri with Routes, in mixed media. Featuring a plethora of matatus from the 14-seater ones to the big minibuses; from old rickety ones from Dundori to Ongata Rongai’s flashy rides; from those adorned with the faces of the latest hip hop icons to the simple and drab; from passengers crowding to get in, to solitary matatus on their own. What is Denis telling us; the need for motion?

FLEETING HAPPINESS

A separate feature Mastingo (stunts), is a series of photos following a matatu with the conductor running alongside it, hanging on it as it moves and performing all sorts of acrobatics on it as it moves.

And then there is Aron Boruya’s pop-art in the famous Andy Warhol style where the profane, mundane and ordinary is elevated and turned into the sublime just by mounting it on canvas. And so Boruya gives us the images of local corporate logos with sideways commentary through the captions. With Coca-Cola, he tells us, Happiness is Fleeting.

With Securex, he reminds us that this is what Modern Living Brings. Hatari represents Will and Fear, while he makes us see that Pesa Pap, representing money, is indeed the religion of the times as the caption Religion No. 001 attests.

Apart from these, his Kabla ya Java na Kenchic is visually sparse. It’s very bareness, emptiness and lack of life is interesting. It literally reminds us, as the title puts it, of the days before Java and Kenchic, before global capitalism reminding us that money is good. (Leftists will come at me for this)

Gakunju Kaigwa’s pieces Samsara, Kiboko, Ankole, Kirinyaga, Suswa, Satao and Sultan further suggest that the elevated can eventually be not just viewed as but become, a part of everyday life. Having spent more than 30 years in what some would consider the ‘abstract’ world of sculpture, Gakunju’s art pieces at the exhibition are also nifty lounge seats and coffee tables, reminding us that ambiguity is a part of everyday existence.

Philip Kere’s Silence and Things Will Look Up point to the need to find spaces of silence in Nairobi’s hustle and bustle and the necessity of optimism in the city jungle.

Anne Mwiti’s Urban Woman is fascinating. It features a caricature of a woman with a misshapen head and trunk-like body and what looks like bicycle wheels sitting atop her chest. The figure looks more like a monster than anything else and an actual crack in the canvas which has been untidily stitched together, crosses her face.

The picture is not meant as an indictment on what the urban woman has become however. That is made clear by the encouraging words penciled beside the picture. The words are an ode to women’s strength and ability to bear, feed and nurture children.

NAIROBI REVIEWED

What we are to make of the grotesque nature of Anne Mwiti’s woman is the realisation that urbanisation and modern living which today sees women earning more than and outperforming men, has made the male folk afraid. Concepts such as ‘manzi wa Nairobi’ crop up to attempt to box women, police them, keep them down.

Urban legends such as the Nigerian “Mami Wota” that we came across in secondary school set books are in the same league. Why, for instance, does this pejorative “manzi wa Nairobi” exist yet there is no ‘chali wa Nairobi”, attendant with all the myths, fables and legends of evil manhood?

And so Anne Mwiti is revealing the fear in the male folk that forces them to create an image of grotesque womanhood passed round in popular narratives (songs, bar-talk) to scare women into submission.

And then finally, Osborne Macharia’s photography series which broke the internet -- Nyanyes. We are again introduced to Mrs Were, Mrs Adhiambo and Mrs Njuguna, the fictional high flying Kenyan grannies that lived life large in the 60s and 70s. There’s no better way to crown an exhibition called Nairobi Reviewed than with this collection of mind-blowing photographs, set in a fictitious past.

Osborne Macharia is recreating Kenya, giving the young a new idea of how to ‘perform’ oldness, where being old is no longer pitiable but the new definition of cool. This is how we need to look at Nairobi, and the world at large. Slap on a little fantasy to colour up the dullness and tedium of everyday life.