Junk artist transforms Cessna bits and pieces into fine art

Remade in Kenya is the title of an awesome exhibition currently filling two floors at Alliance Francaise. The title refers first to a stunning showcase of recycled airplane parts and other assorted ‘found objects’ transformed by Afghan-American artist Walied Osman into what local artists often fondly call junk art or jua kali art.

There are other venues around Nairobi where local artists are also exhibiting the magical way that ‘junk’ can be transformed into incredibly beautiful works of art. For instance, Kota Otieno at Circle Art Gallery is one; El Tayeb at Red Hill Gallery is another.

Petrol tanks

Yet the recycled artworks created by Osman are exceptional for several reasons. One is the nature of the junk that he found in three airplane hangars at Wilson Airport.

Coincidentally, the pilot who had owned the hangars (including countless Cessna jets inside) had recently died, leaving his widow keen to dispose of her hubby’s hobbies and the resourceful Afghan engineer happy to take a slew of airplane parts off her hands for a fair price.

As a consequence, his exhibition is filled with works of unusual art made out of everything from airplane wings and tiptop petrol tanks to noses off Cessna single-engine jets, pilot-co-pilot love seats and even an aluminum box containing a leather-covered airplane toilet seat, a ‘flush’ button, mirror and implicit pun about the functionality of the art.

What also makes Osman’s art exceptional is that practically every piece makes a social statement, be it about Westgate, Ebola, climate change or a cautionary comment on conservation.

For instance, he has one wall covered with futuristic ‘elephants’, all meant to immortalise the memory of an ‘extinct’ species, one imagined in 2050, another in 3000 and another as a beautiful fantasy based on the hearsay of those who’d seen elephants before they went extinct.

Touch

Osman’s concern is not just for the survival of elephants but also of sharks, whose slaughter he and his wife Isabel had witnessed recently. In tribute to those sharks, he’s designed a series of flying scrap-metal fish, one of which contains a mouthful of real shark’s teeth that the artist managed to collect in Lamu where these majestic creatures were sadly being slaughtered in droves, all to obtain shark fins for the booming Chinese market.

Many of his art works are interactive, begging the viewer to touch the art to see what will happen next. That’s the case with his ‘tic-tac-toe’ metal work which has many buttons tempting one to touch.

But Osman’s also into creating functional art out of his airplane parts and the second floor of the show is filled with funky home accessories, from coffee tables and a drinks bar to hanging lamps and a variety of comfy metallic chairs, all designed by Osman and his French wife Isabel D’Hault.

But if there’s one item the show that attracts non-stop attention, it’s his recycled Volkswagon beetle which he’s reassembled with a Cessna jet engine to ensure that his 1960s bug actually moves.

Jack-of-all trades

Described by Osman as ‘a work in progress’, one can’t help feeling the same expression is applicable to the man himself. For instance, he’d never created a work of art before coming to Kenya.

Instead, his technical background is in electrical engineering and management, but his professions include everything from filmmaking to procurement to translation work in Afghanistan (since his mother’s tongue is Farsi although his own is English).

In essence, Osman has been a jack of all trades whose adaptability, street smarts, charm and language facility all have contributed to his building several successful businesses before coming to Kenya.

An unfortunate incident took place some time before he and Isabel arrived in Kenya; so in a sense, his creative constructions have had a therapeutic effect on the man who I would suggest has also been ‘Remade in Kenya’ just as have been his mind-boggling works of junk art.

Meanwhile, since Wednesday, Nairobi National Museum’s Cultural Dynamism Space has been filled with a fascinating poster exhibition of pen-and-ink drawings of “African Revolutionary Leaders”. Included in this powerful showcase of true heroes of Africa are men like Nelson Mandela, Samora Machel, Ahmed Ben Bella and Sam Nujoma among many others.

Drawn by the Venezuelan artist Jorge Cruz, the exhibition opened to commemorate African Liberation Day and was organised jointly by the National Museums of Kenya and the Venezuelan Embassy to Kenya.

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