Kenya art: Creatives imagine a new utopia for Nairobi

Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, has lengthy been often known as “the green city in the sun” due to its mixture of forest and grasslands among the many city sprawl, however it all will depend on the place you’re viewing it from.

Seen from one of many metropolis’s comfy condominium blocks or houses, then sure, maybe – from certainly one of its densely packed slums, then no.

There, life may be characterised by poverty and ecological catastrophe, akin to flooding and lethal landslides.

But an artwork collective – Kairos Futura – has been attempting to take what would possibly appear to be a few of the metropolis’s extra dystopian parts and create a imaginative and prescient of a utopia, or a minimum of how that is perhaps achieved.

Their exhibition Hakuna Utopia options the works of seven artists exploring themes of apocalypse and resilience – some in fairly summary methods – as they reply to the each day challenges endured by Nairobi’s six million residents.

One of the collective, Stoneface Bombaa, grew up in Mathare, the capital’s second-largest casual settlement.

He has overcome nice odds to grow to be an artist and desires to make use of his work to handle the best way that individuals in Mathare reside – typically missing jobs, housing and training.

Bombaa says they endure a “hand-to-mouth economy”, by no means certain the place their subsequent meal will come from.

“People are really angry,” he says, however via artwork, he feels he can “channel” his group’s anger into one thing optimistic as “art unites”.

Bombaa got down to create from the exhibitions “micro-utopia” websites dotted across the metropolis.

He known as it the “jungle room” and hoped to get folks to attach with nature from inside Mathare itself, in an try and bridge the ecological divide.

Ironically, the constructing he had recognized as a potential website was demolished by the authorities to make means for a street.

Undeterred, he has been taking youngsters from his group, typically caught dwelling in unimaginable city squalor, to expertise Nairobi’s verdant parks and expose them to inexperienced areas.

“There are no trees or green spaces in Mathare,” Bombaa says.

But by considering the thought of utopia, he believes that he can think about what it could be like if folks in his group really had unrestricted entry to town’s inexperienced areas.

In this fashion, folks in his group can declare a proper to entry nature that’s denied to them just because they’re poor.

Bombaa additionally complains about how peculiar Nairobians, typically scrabbling to make a dwelling, should pay to enter a few of their metropolis’s most lovely places such because the arboretum or Karura forest.

The Kairos Futura workforce are additionally drawing inspiration from nature to make use of their creativeness in methods to deal with pressing environmental points.

For instance, Coltrane McDowell has utilized this to structure.

In his work Invisible Cities, he was impressed by termite mounds to reimagine what structure would possibly appear like sooner or later.

Another artist within the present, Abdul Rop, identified for his mesmerising woodcut prints and work, says that so as to “achieve utopia”, Nairobians have to work collectively.

“That’s why the young people are agitating right now for change,” he says, suggesting they’re pissed off by a corrupt political system that hems of their potential.

Gen Z were at the forefront of protests this 12 months in opposition to new tax measures, which noticed the federal government make an embarrassing U-turn.

Rop argues that by serious about utopia via the lens of artwork, younger folks might discover artistic methods to battle for his or her future.

Rather than being far-fetched, he thinks that it may well assist think about a bolder and extra equal future for his metropolis.

“The moment to act for the future is now,” he says.