Our bus turned onto a street lined with vendors set up in small stalls with corrugated roofs full of clothes fruits shoes furniture coffee the doors to hotels hidden behind walls….everyone walking and talking and full and busy. Scooters and cars jostle for space amongst the people in down main drag full of store fronts, bright signs hanging above, more small vendors with carts closer to the street. We were heading to the Mukuru Arts Collective deep within the east side of Nairobi.
The Mukuru Arts Collective was started by Adam Masava as a way to channel the energy and creative power of children in the Mukuru slum. He didn’t want to see them getting into trouble, and instead wanted a better avenue for them to learn a skill and even make their own money. The Mukuru Art Club was started in 2010 as two rooms on a second floor turned into studios. Since that time it has grown into a full collective encompassing three floors of group studio spaces. Students learn invaluable painting skills, homing their own talents and visions. The sales of their paintings help pay for their school tuition or support for their families. The collective gives them a space and the platform to promote their work through a series of shows and by allowing guests to visit.
Our visit lead us through studio after studio within the art collective. The spaces were full of finished pieces, works in progress, brushes and paints freshly in use. The best surprise was the presence of the artists themselves, each waiting to tell us about their process and visions behind each piece. It’s rare to get to talk extensively with artists in their studio, and to talk to so many artists about their love of painting and how it manifests was beyond anything I could have imagined.
Adam, the founder of the collective, is quickly gaining international acclaim after having shows in Europe and the United States as well as his hometown of Nairobi. He has a distinctive style and process that begins with his painting surface. Each piece starts with transformed corrugated metal wrapped around stretcher bars. The metal itself gathered locally and is usually used as roofing. The metal is heated to allow it to lose weight, then treated with an acid to promote rusting in certain places, and hammered thin. When you walk into his studio you are immediately surrounded by the people of the community. Mama Chips who sells potatoes cooked just outside, Mama Banana who sells bananas to people in cars during traffic jams, the enterprising lady selling masks during the pandemic. People on scooters hauling gasoline cconatiners, water containers, bread crates. Children playing in the streets. Adam catches the small moments of the people who surround him everyday and elevates them to a kind of beauty they may not see in themselves.
The theme of finding such moments, places and people repeated over and over again in many the artists’ works. We paint what we know after all. But what I loved so much, and was so inspired by, was the lens through which the artists allowed us to see their world. They bring fresh views and eyes to the slum they have lived in, brought beauty to the moments they have caught with their brushes, pallets knives and canvases. Stories of hardships told through narrative pieces, celebrations of sunsets over tea fields from the areas outside of Nairobi, and intimate pen-drawn portraits of local people were just some of what the artists shared with us.
Vincent who spreads intense colors across his canvases with pallet knives, clouds and tea fields growing out of each swipe. Alex, the youngest artist in the collaborative, who paints the skies full of metallic pinks and purples bursting from the rooflines of the surrounding buildings. The light shifting as you look at it from a different angle, just as he has made the viewer look at the slums from a different angle altogether. Alex, another young artist enthralled its the colors and shapes of the clouds he photographs. He’s experimenting with styles realistic and abstracted, each making you want to sit under the skies he finds.
Maryanne who paints lanterns and the light that pours forth from them just as she encourages everyone to let their own light shine.
Brian thinks deeply about each of his subjects. His bodaboda drivers filling canvases even as he contemplates their work, business and what they mean to the community. Stephen whose love for painting and teaching shines through his every word. He quit teaching math to become an artist despite worries and questions from family. And thank goodness he did! His paintings of children are striking in their sense of coloring and light rivaled only by the personalities of his subjects shining through their faces. He still works with students at various levels all the way down to age five! “When you love something such as art you cannot contain it or it will burst from you!” Stephen has gained quite a following for his art, and he continues to give back to his community through its sales. And small Aaron with his two paintings of animals and more importantly the pride with which he showed them off. He could not be more than 5 or 6 and already you can see the impact art is having on him.
All too soon the collective was closing to visitors. Many of the artists will remain to work long into the evening, unwilling to set down their brushes and leave the fellowship found amongst each other. There is a special power found in friendships made in the studio, for creating requires a certain amount of laying one’s heart bare in order to lay it upon the canvas. These friendships are evident in the easy way the artists of the collective support and promote one another. I returned to our bus, reluctant to leave such creative energy, yet hopeful for a chance to work together again soon.
Comments