The Yellow Crossing: The Peoples’ Waltz

Nathalie Mba Bikoro

Au fil du Fleuve
15 rue El Hadj Abdoul Aziz Sy (ex rue Ribet)
Sindone, Senegal
Tel. 00 221 77 379 95 34

16 May – 10 June 2012
Open daily 10am to 12pm and 3pm to 7pm

The Yellow Crossing: the Peoples´ Waltz presents new visual works in collaboration between Marie-Caroline Camara and Nathalie Mba Bikoro. Comprising of an installation in the old house of the Devès family and its outer surroundings, the exhibition presents a journey of the people of St Louis, focusing on family, migration, displacement and returning home. Both artist’s works present their own journeys from Africa and beyond, of life, history, travel and family. Both return to this home in St Louis, combining visions to pay homage to their histories and specifically developing works for St Louis and its people. This unique site-specific collaboration celebrates our stories of how we came to become who we are today and where we go from here.

With its starting point connecting the two artists with the home of the Devès family, from slave trade economies, threading through stories and myths of political struggle and human rights, the visual displays create an installation of sculptures, found objects, photography, print-making, film and a series of on-site live performances that will engage the participation of the local audiences.

Inspired by a Fang proverb from her grandmother “you must go very far to come back”, Gabonese artist Mba Bikoro investigates these routes and concepts of returning home. Inspired greatly by the history and the people of St Louis, the two artists pay tribute to the people to rediscover the myths of the home and identity.

The exhibition will transform the home of the old Devès working factory, a former Arabic gum producer, into a sanctuary presenting a homage to the people. From mixed medium visual displays, the artists combine both their skills to create installations of film, photography, sculpture and printworks. During the exhibition, the artist will present a series of live art performances to local audiences within the home and its outer surroundings creating spaces and events engaging in viewers’ participation. Camara and Mba Bikoro meet to give life to these forms and objects by narrating fractured narratives as a way of reconstructing hope and vision.

Nathalie Mba Bikoro

Nathalie Anguezomo Menier Mba Bikoro is a French-Gabonese interdisciplinary artist working with visual arts & live art performance.

With an education in Politics, Philosophy and Media Arts, Bikoro leaves France and the UK to set out her work as an artist to return back to Gabon.

Her 10 year battle with leukeamia during childhood in Gabon, the Netherlands and France has influenced the narrative and methods in which she chooses to create her work. This personal struggle for recovery and return back to her family has pushed her visual language as well as setting goals to develop independent creative initiatives in the arts and culture lead by local people. Her aims and objectives are to incorporate converging arts and sciences into her own practice and research towards developing a Cancer Recovery Arts Centre. She aims to do this by incorporating creative spaces for interaction for children and adults in Libreville, Lambarene & Bitam (Gabon) and by developing educational collaborative community projects lead by local people.

Mba Bikoro uses the vocabulary of various art forms to make works that function to create fractured narratives and blurs boundaries between meaning, experience and aesthetics. Her alternative live art performances are unique interpretations of historical mythology and challenging appropriations of a knowledge far from ordinary. In doing so she highlights, accentuates and magnifies elements of the relationships present within these spaces.

Her practice proposes a composition of sound, body movement, archaeology and digital performance and encourages interactive response. Her approach responds to people and spaces mediating a great awareness of combining politics and philosophy.

Marie-Caroline Camara

Marie-Caroline Camara was born in France and has lived in Senegal since 2007. She has a bi-cultural background as her father was from Saint Louis and her mother from Normandy. Her exquisite restoration of a warehouse by the Jay Wharf in Saint Louis in Sénégal is one of her many contributions to the cultural life of the city. The house itself, where the exhibition will take place, belonged to the Devès family. Gaspard Devès was a local merchant involved in the Gum Arabic trade who was also a political and civil rights activist. Amongst her passions, Marie-Caroline has a fascination with architecture and craft. For her warehouse conversion, she chose plain colours and low maintenance materials such as chiffon-like fabrics, concrete and oxidized metal sheets. All the furniture in the house has been designed by Marie Caroline, inspired by cultural cross-fertilization and made by local craftsmen. She has also sourced recycled objects as decorative items. She believes that Saint Louis is a vibrant city full of emotions which informs her choice of light colours and her minimalist style.

DAK’ART BIENNALE 2012 – the information

Dak’Art 2012 | Biennale de l’art africain contemporain 

Dates: 11 May -10 June 2012

Place: Dakar, Senegal

Web: www.biennaledakar.org

Curators: Christine EYENE, Nadira LAGGOUNE, Riason NAIDOO

THEME: “CONTEMPORARY CREATION AND SOCIAL DYNAMICS”

The tenth edition of the biennale takes place in a particular context. Indeed 2012 is the year of the elections, as was 2000. This year also marks the twentieth anniversary of the longest established biennale on the African continent. A gathering well known to the international art scene, DAK’ART is scheduled in accordance to its biennial calendar. The theme chosen for this edition stands as a pretext to examine, through various angles, the dialogue contemporary artists engage with a social environment in constant change.
Throughout the world, and particularly in Africa, times of crises have given way to periods of stability. Some countries are recovering from a financial crisis, others, from a social dead-end; people’s movements have never been so crucial in the quest for a new equilibrium. In this quest, culture is one of the significant levers to activate. Each time, artists have played an instrumental role in social mobilisation and in the raising of individual and collective awareness and engagement.
“Contemporary creation and social dynamics” is an investigative field that scholars, art critics and artists are invited to explore as part of the encounters and exchanges of the 2012 edition of the Biennale.

Ousseynou Wade, Secretary General of the Dakar Biennale

Dak’Art 2012 brings together numerous events. In addition to the international exhibition presenting artists from several African countries and the diaspora at the Musée Théodore Monod, an exhibition at the Galerie Nationale will feature three invited artists: Peter Clarke, Goddy Leye and Berni Searle.
Spain will be honoured with a presentation of architects and visual artists at Maison de la Culture Douta Seck. Finally, two exhibitions will pay homage to pioneering artists Papa Ibra Tall et Joe Ouakam.
The encounters and exchanges will invite international participants to debate around the theme “Contemporary creation and social dynamics”. … Of course the OFF will offer numerous exhibitions in Dakar, Saint-Louis and in the whole of Senegal.
SELECTION 2012

The selection committee was composed of three members and met in Dakar from 16 to 18 February 2012.
The members of the committee reviewed three hundred and twenty-nine applications submitted by artists from thirty-six African countries and twenty-one other countries […].
Each application was the object of lengthy discussions between the members of the international committee. The selection criteria were: the originality of the artistic approach, the aesthetic and conceptual qualities, as well as the currency of the discourse, regardless of the theme of the 2012 Dakar Biennale.

Forty-two artists from twenty-one African countries and one artist from Reunion Island have been selected for the international exhibition.

SELECTED ARTISTS

Adel Marwa (Egypt), Alleck Nirveda (Mauritius), Assie Romaric (Ivory Coast), Ba Cheikhou (Senegal), Baba-Ali Younes (Morocco), Baker Bridget (South Africa), Beckett James (South Africa), Caranda-Martin Doughba Hamilton (Liberia), Chachage Rehema (Tanzania), Cissé Mamadou (Senegal), Diallo Bakary (Mali), Emmanuel Paul (South Africa), Eyongakpa  Em’Kal (Cameroon), Fatmi Mounir (Morocco), Foli Jessica (South Africa), Goliath Gabrielle (South Africa), Hoareau Stéphanie (France – Reunion Island), Kameli Katia (Algeria), Kimani Wanja (Kenya), Konan Pascal (Ivory Coast), Lamrani Jamila (Morocco), Mba Bikoro Nathalie (Gabon), Modisakeng Mohau (South Africa), Modum Chika (Nigeria), Mteki Nancy (Zimbabwe), Mutelekesha Victor (Zambia), Nasr Moataz (Egypt), Ndiaye Cheikh (Senegal) Ngqinambi Ndikhumbule (South Africa), Niang Ibrahima Piniang (Senegal), Nsengiyumva Laura (Rwanda), Ramanankirahina Amalia (Madagascar), Sagna Henri (Senegal), Segueda Léopold (Burkina Faso), Seydi Mamady (Senegal), Shadi Lerato (South Africa), Sinzogan Julien (Benin), Tabti Oussama (Algeria), Tundula Christian (DRC), Youmbi Hervé (Cameroon), Zaidi Rafik (Algeria), Zouggar Sofiane (Algeria)

42 artists 16 females, 26 males from 21 African countries and Reunion Island

CURATORS OF DAK’ART 2012

Christine EYENE is an independent curator and art critic currently working with Autograph ABP, London. In 2011 she was curator of the African section of the 3rd edition of ‘Photoquai – Biennial of World Images’, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris and ‘Gwanza – Month of Photography’, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare.
Her current exhibitions are: ‘Reflections on the Self: Five African Women Photographers’, Hayward Touring, UK (2011-2014) and ‘Women Speak Out’, Dakar and touring Africa (2011-2012). Previous projects include ‘FOCUS – Contemporary Art Africa’, as part of Art Basel Public Programme, Switzerland (2010-2011).
As an art critic she has contributed to Africultures, Art South Africa, Basler Zeitung, Manifesta Journal, Third Text, and written essays in art books and exhibition catalogues.
Eyene has been member of jury of Fondation Blachère Prize at the Bamako Encounters 2007, 2009 and  Dak’Art Biennial 2008, 2010. She currently sits in the selection committees of Art Moves Africa and Visa for Creation, Institut Français.
Website: eyonart.blogspot.com

Nadira LAGGOUNE is curator and art critic. She graduated in Law and holds a Master in audiovisual criticism and art theory. A doctoral researcher, she is currently assistant lecturer at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-arts in Algiers.
Laggoune has been member of numerous art jury in Algeria and abroad, including the Arab Fond for Art and Culture (AFAC). Today she is a permament member of the Fond Algérien d’Aide à la Production Cinématographique and AICA.
She has written extensively on contemporary art, especially Algerian art, as well as gender. She has curated many international and local exhibitions including the 2nd Panafrican Festival, Algiers 2009 and the International Festival of Contemporary Art (FIAC), Algiers 2009 and 2011.
Nadira Laggoune lives and works in Algiers where she strives to give visibility to emerging artists in Algeria and on the African continent.

Riason NAIDOO was born in 1970 in Chatsworth (Durban), South Africa. He has BA and MA in Fine Art from University of the Witwatersrand. Riason has curated several photographic exhibitions dealing with the archives − most notably on the work of photographer Ranjith Kally shown at the 6th Bamako Encounters (2005), touring includes Reunion Island − and more recently the exhibition entitled ‘The Indian in DRUM magazine in the 1950s’ shown at museums in South Africa. He most recently directed the South Africa-Mali Project: Timbuktu Manuscripts project for the South African Presidency and the Department of Arts & Culture, also NEPAD’s first cultural project. He has previously been in charge of artistic projects at the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS) in Johannesburg; taught drawing, painting and art history in the Department of Architecture at the University of Witwatersrand; and worked as Education Officer at the Durban Art Gallery. He has been on exchanges to the MS University of Baroda in India (1997) and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Bordeaux in France (2001).
He is currently director of the South African National Gallery and the Old Town House museums, part of Iziko Museums based in Cape Town. He recently curated ‘1910-2010: From Pierneef to Gugulective’, that showcased a century of South African art at the South African National Gallery. He has also worked as an artist in painting and new media.

ORGANISATION
The Dakar Biennale is organised by the Ministry in charge of Culture, Senegal

PARTNERS

Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie
L’Union Economique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine
Ambassade de France
Ambassade d’Espagne
Communauté Française de Belgique
Institut Français
EIFFAGE
Fondation Blachère France
Ville de Dakar

PRESS

- For information and press enquiries please first register for an accreditation. The form is available on www.biennaledakar.org
Accreditation requests have to be returned by 20 April.

- A media space will be available online for accredited journalists.

- Press contact:  comdakart@biennaledakar.org

Le communiqué de presse est disponible en français sur le site de la biennale www.biennaledakar.org

The Tate Modern – engaging with Africa

Pause – the work of Cote D’Ivoire sculptor Jems Koko Bi

An African art collection at the Tate has been mooted for a while but thanks to the single-mindedness of Tate Modern’s International Curator Kerryn Greenberg herself a South African, it has happened sooner than most would have expected. The sponsorship of Nigeria’s progressive Guarantee Trust Bank  has  kick started the  process which includes the recent appointment of Elvira Dyangani Ose to the curatorial team and the establishment of a large acquisitions committee made up mostly of collectors active in this field – many from the African continent. It is exciting  to see this begin to unfold – not withstanding the usual tired debates about what constitutes African Art – the effects of this initiative will ripple far and wide – effectively forcing other  key global institutions to be cognizant of art emerging from Africa or art inspired by this continent. In addition to validating a number of fine artists who have been under examined and under exposed it will, by its very process of fundraising for the collection,  engage the continent’s governments, entrepreneurs, institutions and other stakeholders together with Africa’s trading partners,  in the business of supporting contemporary visual arts.  I hope that Tate Modern wont succumb to a general tendency to  favour African photography and New Media at the expense of work linked to painting, drawing, print making  and other more traditional mediums. I am a huge fan of African photography but I think the danger is that it is often  “easier” for the west to view Africa through the photographer’s lense despite the fact that the photographer may be living and working in their own country it can  chime  with that sense of the outside looking in and it is for “Westerners” a comfortably familiar and technically clinical medium often invoking memories of viewing harrowing or entertaining documentaries from the comfort of the sofa. How different from and El Anatsui “cloth” with its all its thousands of bits of actual histories embodied by branded bottle tops and foils,  a Hazoume mask made from a fuel smuggler’s modified jerrycan or indeed a Peterson Kamwathi charcoal drawing produced on the wall of  his studio in Kiambu with the neighbour’s dog looking in hopefully at the door. Of course there is a huge role for fine art photography (including that of “ambassador” for the wider art scene in Africa) anyone interested must buy George Osodi’s brilliant newly published book The Rape of Paradise from Trolley Books or look at the wonderful work of Mauro Pinto from Mozambique or Adolphus Opara from Nigeria to name but a few.

Locating art

For me it’s always important that art is not an alienating process in a spiritual sense – in fact it should  be  the opposite. Last year’s Contested Terrains show at the Tate Modern conceived and executed jointly with CCA Lagos – was criticised by some for being too aligned to the global contemporary scene – I think 

Gor Soudan | Along With The Rest of Them II| 2012 | 210 x 95 cm

it was Time Out Magazine who wise cracked  “too much Art and not enough Africa”.   Depending on your point of view this either  speaks of ignorance and arrogance on the part of  Western journalists or touches on a truth that Africa must safeguard its own cultural uniqueness – and in particular  – its spirituality in the broad sense – the overwhelming sense of “soul” that one gets from art that grows firmly and proudly out of African culture. What I can say is that this was and is (it will be staged in Lagos too)  a fine model for respectful collaboration between what are  in institutional terms,  a David and Goliath. Admittedly an  ageing if highly successful  Goliath as the geopolitical tables turn relentlessly and the heirs to those  ill-gotten plantation sugar fortunes  beckon back to Africa for reasons that go well beyond altruism. Fortunately The Tate is not alone in its African  interests – INIVA (Institute of International Visual Arts) now under the stewardship of the distinguished Tessa Jackson is putting its weight in what seems to be a measured strategic way  behind  supporting Africa related  projects.  The debate about national and continental art and the global art scene will rumble on – one thing is for sure for various reasons most young artists from Africa want to be known as international artists not African artists. In an interesting discussion I had with Peterson Kamwathi, Michael Soi and Gour Soudan in Nairobi recently in the aftermath of controversy over a video installation that had got out of control and where crosses from actual graves had been used as props,  Kamwathi coined the phrase (with tongue in cheek) “I’d rather be a human being than an artist”. On the flight back from Africa, musing on this conversation and other things,  it struck me that my experience of the continent could  be summed up in one word “improvisation” and I mean that on different levels – but the main one being that the sense of personal (not economic) alienation that one finds in the West is largely absent in Africa -and in its place is a propensity for communication and sharing the threads of human experience (even if this sometimes goes horribly wrong) – the  musical metaphor for this is not only Jazz  but for me is my memories  of people whistling in the Old Town of  Mombasa or in Lamu,  and other human beings responding in kind from  streets away. Maybe that is why El Anatsui and Elias Sime are so quintessentially African – for tapestry – of one sort or another  in Africa – is what it’s all about. How different from much of contemporary western culture with its sense of boundaries, glass  and pedestals – and to what extent is art all about that sense of the other – to what extent is art about the human need to be in awe of something and to revere it?

Lovemore Kambudzi and Michael Soi – standing by their brushes

Lovemore Kambudzi | Supper After the Night Watch | Oil on Canvas| 104 x 168cm

Zimbabwean painter Lovemore Kambudzi’s work – goes  to the heart of the debate about Western influences in African contemporary art and whether the more traditional (western) media still has relevance. This work is very loosely inspired  by Rembrandt’s famous Night Watch following  Harare’s Gallery Delta’s  workshop  held some years back. I love this painting with its almost imperceptible gear shift  from seventeenth century Holland to  21st century Harare. For me it symbolises a continent that will always surprise and defy the stereotypes that its burdened with. A continent where aspirations never die.

Zimbabwe has an interesting art history – two National Galleries created in colonial times  – the first Director of the National Gallery in Harare, Frank McEwen, still very much  respected in Zimbabwe, made it his life’s work to nurture  the artists of the Shona people in particular  whom,  he said, “have retained their mystical beliefs, profound in a magical world of ancestral and tribal spirits. …….. Today, the Shona artist, in between two worlds, the new and the old, feels a need for expression, and to mark his presence, in a new domain, relies on his rich mystical heritage. His inspirations come from the mythical religion and the symbolism of the elders, through meditation, dreams and dreaming “. It was ironic that McEwen had been living in Paris and was immersed in the work of Picasso, Matisse and others all of whom were  influenced so profoundly  by African “tribal art”. His approach was quite different to fellow  European  Margaret Trowell,  who established the art school at Makerere University in Uganda in 1939 and inspired generations of “cubist ” painters – Africans influenced by Europeans influenced by Africans .  McEwen wisely tried to short-circuit that sterile loop and attempted to facilitate the birth of a new African movement using traditional materials (stone) and traditional carving techniques – and inspired by “the symbolism of the elders” – in truth he didn’t need to do much apart from support the artists with studio space and sales. The further sad irony is that the movement that McEwen helped to create eventually deteriorated in  to  a largely commercial operation that “over-produced” and betrayed the values that had inspired it. It seems  that much of McEwen’s knowledge about the Shona people and their spiritual beliefs came from his close relationship with Thomas  Mukarobgwa, I came across this account of what happened:

“Sitting on the low foundations of the future National Gallery as it was being built, McEwen met Thomas Mukarobgwa, who talked to him about the Shona  tribe, their religion, their dance, and their music. Since the authorities insisted that all the staff of the gallery be ex-policeman, McEwen got Mukarobgwa in as a cleaner, and gave him, and his friends who followed him, drawing and painting materials. Thus an unofficial workshop was formed in the basement. After about a year, the vigorous “Afro-expressionism” of the paintings was spontaneously superseded by carving in local stone — from soft soapstone to hard serpentine and verdite.”  Extract courtesy of Fine Art America

Mukarobgwa was an inspired colourist/expressionist painter  who painted his dreams and visions – I heard from one source that he rejected painting on canvas in the end for ideological reasons favouring the traditional African medium of  sculpture.

So what are we to make of Kambudzi – the “Shona artist” who  has remained utterly faithful to the Western medium of canvas and oil paints even  inspired by Western masters from time to time, painting   intensely “local”  paintings  and who has been described as the African Breughel in the same way that Michael Soi from Kenya  has been referred to as an African Hogarth? Both artists are popular in their own countries (in so far as contemporary art is taken seriously by the general public in Zimbabwe and Kenya – countries lacking the massive influencing power of a Tate Modern or a MOMA) – Soi has led a crusade in Kenya to get people interested in art – his quasi  children’s book style is no accident – some of his biggest fans are children,”get them young” , he figures. Neither artists are in the cool school of international curation but their works are steadily gaining recognition locally and abroad and both live by their painting – unaided by grants or teaching jobs.

But painters are under threat. In a multi-dimensional world the convention of applying paint to canvas can seem limiting or even passe in a global culture whose  language is  appropriation and contextualisation. The new art elites emerging across Africa must be careful not to marginalise the men and women of the brush. For people are drawn to paintings despite the triumphs of photography  probably because they recognise in them that primeval language of communication which by dint of  its hand movements is a metaphor for life itself .

The missing ingredient in East Africa certainly has been all to often  an absence of  pertinent critiquing and curation. Simon Njami and his “Amnesia” group were right – Africans need to curate themselves and are increasingly doing so.  And one of the most positive things that has come out of  this  “intervention” is the emergence of more local curators.

Ramoma (Rahimtulla Museumof Modern Art)  – formerly the biggest gallery in Nairobi collapsed  in 2010 in a veritable cauldron of bad feeling. It was founded with excellent intentions and the palatial  new building that was to be its downfall, was born out of a very generous donation. The new premises and what came with them was, in hindsight, misconceived. You could say the whole thing was too “top down” – the really sustainable stuff must come and is coming from the artists themselves and outside support – like all aid in Africa – must be seen as the double-edged sword that it is. Good leadership is what will solve Africa’s problems and leaders are emerging within the community of artists – and it is indeed  a  community. I was moved to hear that when the respected artist Richard Kimathi found some fame and fortune early on his career he would dash some of his artist colleagues  500 shillings each every time he sold a painting – “it kept a lot of us going in paint and brushes” an artist told me. That’s community and that’s my experience of the best of Africa in general.

I am convinced that as far as Kenya is concerned we need to see the emergence of two things: firstly a meaningful and competent art school and secondly an effective art museum where contemporary art from Kenya and other African countries and can be seen by the country’s artists and general public. In a conversation I had recently with Nike Jonah of the U.K.’s Arts Council the importance of “the archive” came through as one of the vital ingredients to promote real development in the art  sector. As an ex-publisher I found it ironic to hear Bisi Silva of CCA, Lagos declare that it was the library that was the most vital  her centre.

Lovemore Kambudzi| Mbare Bus Terminus |Oil on Canvas |

In this  fine painting Kambudzi celebrates the existence of  Mbare Bus Terminus. Why do these paintings of Harare life appeal?  One of the reasons is the sense of pride in the  place and its people  – the often motley and frequently impoverished survivors of the Mugabe regime are drawn with shrewd humour – the woman happy in the knowledge she has a body worth flaunting, the little boy echoing the furtive look of his mother, the dazed patient calm in the knowledge that help, however basic, has been granted him, the porter stoic and grim-faced; the woman with a suitcase on her head intent only on catching the bus. Nothing misses Kambudzi.

The artist’s version of pointillism is no accidental borrowing from European painting, it probably has more to do with cloth and the weaving of threads than anything else as in Africa fabrics are key culturally. It also  manages to  represent on canvas  what I for one experience in Africa -  a much greater sense of interrelation and connectedness than one generally feels elsewhere. And the vibrancy of colour and smell and sound and taste that you find on the continent – somehow this modified Seurat and Van Gogh  style perfectly recreates that rich “soupy” feeling. And then of course there is the humour which is everywhere in Africa – still alive in even  some of the worst situations.

Whereas Kambudzi has been likened to Breughel Michael Soi from Nairobi has been dubbed its Hogarth. Like Kambudzi he has a fierce work ethic, his works relentlessly targeting hypocrisy and greed. From venal priests to leering politicians, his paintings  respond to  the big issues of the day – including political impunity and the expanding sex industry and  a compromised police force. But again,  like Kambudzi, his vision is  not only critical or negative, his working women series, for example pays homage to a new generation of confident, beautiful and  savvy Kenyan women competing with men in all the professions.

Cyrus Kabiru’s Metaphorical Vision

Cyrus Kabiru | Caribbean Sun | 2012

Cyrus Kabiru is one of the most exciting of the younger artists to have emerged from Nairobi over the last few years. Kabiru recently completed his first international exhibition at Kuntspodium T Gallery in Tilburg, Holland which included an installation of his signature “C Stunner glasses” made from recycled materials – each with its own story – together creating a powerful metaphor for the way Africa is perceived by the outside world and vice versa. Kabiru’s “glasses” have been featured in Africa’s leading fashion and Arts Magazine, Arise and he has been nominated for awards by the Sandbox network for young innovators. His work seems to symbolise the aspirations of a continent reassessing itself whilst being reassessed by the rest of the world.

Cyrus Kabiru | Revolution|2011

There are innumerable artists in Africa who work with recycled materials, metals, plastic, paper etc – among them some distinguished sculptors such as Romuald Hazoume of Benin, Bertiers  of Kenya and Olu Amoda of Nigeria but it is refreshing to find a young “untrained”artist coolly displaying a  fascination with a single multifaceted theme that we see in Cyrus Kabiru’s surreal and phantasmagorical creations. When I first saw Kabiru’s deceptively humorous work – I was struck by the similarity in seriousness to the works of Hazoume who has continuously found new and extraordinary ways of using the jerry can as a profound metaphor for life in Africa.

 Kabiru has been creating his “spectacles” since childhood when he started to produce toys for his age-mates as a way of bartering his way through school work. The origins of his obsession with “glasses” stem from his father’s neurosis about them (in turn caused by the fact that Cyrus’s  grandfather punished his son severely when, as a boy, he lost a pair of  glasses that the family had made great sacrifices to provide him with).  It is a universal story of poverty and the struggle to overcome it. Cyrus’s father – scarred by his father’s fury when his attempts to help his son with his eyesight came to nought. The father, still mired in poverty, instilling in his son, Cyrus, a bizarre reverence for the thing he himself lost through carelessness – the young son responding to this creatively and instinctively  – by recreating again and again, the object of his father’s pain and his grandfather’s hope and frustration. In so doing, creating a living folk tale through finding fame and fortune through his “glasses” sufficient to lift him out of the poverty that his father and grandfather struggled to overcome.   

Cyrus Kabiru | Owl| 2012

This is the psychological background to the C-Stunners series but the works are rich in social comment too. Each with its own story from glasses with bars that evoke the jails of Nairobi to those with spent bullets that tell their story of criminal or police brutality. Also a love for nature that fuels the artist’s desire to recycle as part of a process of protecting the environment.

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