Frances Nnaggenda’s Mother and Child (left) at Nairobi National Museum and Samwel Wanjau’s Mau Mau Freedom Fighter. PHOTOS | MARGARETTA WA GACHERU
What you need to know:
Beautiful stained glass art can be found in a multitude of public spaces such as corporate office headquarters, banks, schools, restaurants, United Nations offices and even in foreign embassies.
Many other materials and mixed media other than glass can be seen all over Nairobi’s public spaces. Some may be bronze, fiberglass, brick, wrought iron or indigenous stone such as Kisii soap stone, granite and basalt or a mix of cement and steel wire.
There was a time when the only public art in Kenya was to be found in the churches where colourful stained glass windows filled assembly halls with brilliant light and hand-carved altars were the first hints of so-called civilised worship.
The exception under British colonialism were the blackened bronze life-sized sculptures of members of the Kings African Rifles, which still stand on Kenyatta Avenue.
Today, there is public art to be found scattered all over Nairobi. The churches (which have proliferated exponentially over the years) still wear stained glass windows, only now they don’t order them from abroad. Instead, the various denominations order their windows from local glass artists like Nani Croze of Kitengela Glass and Research Trust.
Public Spaces
Today, beautiful stained glass art can be found in a multitude of other public spaces such as corporate office headquarters, banks, schools, restaurants, United Nations offices and even in foreign embassies.
But many other materials and mixed media other than glass can be seen all over Nairobi’s public spaces. Some may be bronze, fiberglass, brick, wrought iron or indigenous stone such as Kisii soap stone, granite and basalt or a mix of cement and steel wire.
One medium that has gained popularity among local artists aiming to produce sculptures of scale is scrap metal. Kioko Mwitiki is one of Kenya’s first scrap metal sculptors whose life-sized wildlife creations can be found on the grounds of several international tourist hotels as well as at the airport.
But these artists are also appreciated overseas as Kioko has often filled shipping containers with scrap metal elephants or wildebeests and other members of the popular ‘Big Five’ and sent them off to places like the San Diego Zoo, which now owns many of his amazing sculptures.
Share skills
The owner of Pimbi Gallery has also taken pains to share his sculpting skills with young Kenyans eager to learn from him. Some of the handiwork of those school-leavers trained by Kioko can be seen along Ngong and Langata Roads where one can see everything from ground hogs and porcupines to giraffes and hyena for sale by the roadside.
Several years back, Kuona Trust organised a public art project in which Gakunju Kaigwa created scores of fiberglass lions which were sponsored by local businessmen and then painted by both professional and amateur artists.
Those same lions were later auctioned off for the “good cause” of wildlife conservation after being displayed all over the country, though primarily around Nairobi.
It was a wonderful exercise that saw many Kenyan philanthropists come out of the woodwork to sponsor public art. Unfortunately, there was a time limit for the lions to be displayed in the public sphere.
But sculptures have been popular public art forms since the early days of Independence when Jomo Kenyatta’s stately bronze statue was first placed across from City Hall, next to the Kenyatta International Convention Centre.
Nairobi National Museum is also a site where a number of sculptures by local artists are on permanent display.
I can’t say who constructed the dinosaur that stands 12 feet tall at the main entrance of the museum; but I know that the Ugandan artist Francis Nnaggenda was commissioned by the late Joseph Murumbi to create the magnificent Mother and Child that is set in stone and also sits squarely in front of the museum’s main entrance.
Stone Sculpture
Then there’s the bronze sculpture of Richard Leakey’s paleontologist father Louis, created by the late Charles Bwire which resides beside the Louis Leakey Auditorium.
And just beneath the Nnaggenda statue is a stone sculpture by the Nyeri-based artist Jackson Wanjau, son of the late great Samwel Wanjau whose monumental Mau Mau Freedom Fighter (MMFF), conceived in cement and reinforced steel wire, stands with visibly fervent resolve at Paa ya Paa Art Centre.
A few local critics complain that Wanjau’s Freedom Fighter should be more “centrally” placed so that a broader population can appreciate the revolutionary character.
But the Freedom Fighter was created at Paa ya Paa where, according to Elimo Njau, Wanjau was assisted in his creative work by the former Fine Art lecturer from Makerere University’s Margaret Trowel School of Art and Paa ya Paa’s managing director.
Njau recalls that the Freedom Fighter had been commissioned by Charles Njonjo who was the Attorney General at the time. It was meant to be relocated to Parliament, but when Njonjo saw Wanjau’s sculpture, he rejected it outright, some say because of the militant ferocity of its expression.
Submit proposals
Given the international clientele that have visited Paa ya Paa over the years, often with the specific goal of seeing Wanjau’s Freedom Fighter, there is an argument for leaving this historic icon right where it is.
In the meantime, two of the latest sculptural creations of public art can be seen at Garden City Mall which (with support from the Circle Art Agency) had invited a range of Kenyan artists to submit their artistic proposals, after which the best would be selected and commissioned to be completed by the time of the mall’s official opening recently.
The two artists whose proposals won were Maggie Otieno and Peterson Kamwathi. Both met the deadline set by the mall directors. And both works add a unique and exceptional touch to Garden City at a time when a myriad of malls seem to be coming up all over the countryside.
A similar sort of public art competition was coordinated by Circle Art and PWC (PricewaterhouseCooper) at Delta House in 2013. The winner of that one was El Tayeb Dailwait, the Nairobi-based Sudanese artist whose striking abstract sculpture stands strategically in the lobby of Delta House.
It’s like an oracle to let you know that this is a structure that values contemporary Kenyan art, so much so that one will see it on every floor and on virtually all the walls of Delta House.
Compared to the way art was undervalued and virtually ignored at Independence, today it can be seen all over Nairobi’s central business district.
The two most prominent pieces of public art are the statues of Tom Mboya next to the National Archives and Dedan Kimathi which stands across from the Hilton Hotel at the start of Kimathi Street.
But by far, the most popular form of public art that can be seen around Nairobi is graffiti art. It can be found most prominently placed at the front entrance of The GoDown Art Centre where graffiti artist Bankslave spray painted a beautiful larger-than-life portrait of Lupita Nyong’o.
Graffiti art can also be seen at the Kenya National Theatre at the entrance to the car park and on walls, sidewalks and cement trenches all over the city.
The most controversial graffiti public art project that gained global media acclaim just months before the 2013 General Election was created in a single night by a team of four graffiti artists including Bankslave, Swift, Uhuru B and Smoki and instigated by political activist Boniface Mwangi.
The block-long graffiti mural which was conceived in Nairobi’s CBD on Muindi Mbingu Street right next to the City Market, was filled with provocative political messages that were easily understood by the man (or woman) on the street.
The striking graffiti mural explicitly cited a range of social scandals that had never been resolved. It also alluded to people power and the importance of people voting for clean candidates untainted by corruption in the forthcoming elections.
Surprisingly, that mural was left untouched by the powers-that-be, despite a popular assumption that the artists and the activist could be persecuted for their public art.
Sadly, the historic graffiti mural no longer exists, not because politicians repainted the wall but because a land developer tore down the wall in order to construct a new set of offices on choice land, the value of which has shot sky high in recent times.
Unfortunately, the Muindi Mbingu mural is one of many beautiful murals that have been destroyed over the years before the public realised that these were treasured art works that deserved to be preserved.
Nonetheless, more local artists are increasingly looking for space (and ideally corporate commissions) to create artworks that wananchi can enjoy, be it on the walkway in front of the Nairobi Hilton or in the Kenya Railways stations such as Syokimau, Makadara and Imara Diama.
