Self-taught Kibera duo create interactive art

Kibera has a worldwide reputation for being the biggest slum in Africa. But in the past few years, it has one other claim to fame and that is the visual artists collective, Maasai Mbili (M2), one of whose members Kevin Irungu, better known as Kevo Stero, has assembled an engaging arts installation at Kuona Trust entitled Jobless Corner Campus (JCC).

The installation, which is highly interactive, practically begs one to get involved either in a giant checker board game, a playstation football match or a big board game of Ludo.

Aspirations

The “campus” installation also includes a lively video which Kevo shot himself and which includes a whole range of Kibera residents who might look like jobless idlers to the outside world as they aren’t employed in Kenya’s relatively small formal sector, but who are busy nonetheless.

The walls of Kuona’s small but cosy exhibition hall are filled with cartoon-like paintings depicting the dreams, aspirations and fantasies of those who are jobless today.

Clustered in fours, the framed paintings tell stories about basic needs common not only to poor people, since everyone needs food, peace, love and even education.

Common themes

So while Kevo’s cartoon-art looks funky and fun, and possibly relevant only to society’s have-nots, it actually portrays a deeper significance, that of the commonalities that all human being share, be they rich or poor.

In fact, the whole JCC installation reflects an artistic style and sensibility that is characteristic to Maasai Mbili. It’s a style that invariably looks playful and often even goofy, but which always conveys a deeper meaning, one that might easily be overlooked if one only looks at the funky-side of M2 art.

Yet M2 artists like Kevo and the collective’s founder Gomba Otieno have consciously made the choice to remain in ‘the slums’ and use their art to present poor people’s perspectives to the wider world.

Satiric parody

For instance, Kevo’s JCC is not only an installation but also a satiric parody on the way the donor community uses lofty language to make claims about how they intend to assist the poor. And yet the poor rarely see much benefit from the massive funds pumped into projects which are meant to achieve goals like ‘sustainable development’ and ‘poverty alleviation’.

In fact, Kibera is flooded with NGOs supposedly doing great good for the locals, including the majority who are ‘jobless’. Yet Kevo’s art strongly suggests that most of those do-gooders don’t have much of an impact on the so-called ‘idlers’ who, like himself, have eyes to see the comings and goings of touristic donors who enjoy sight-seeing in the slums.

Play dress up

When M2 started out, initially with two self-taught sign writers, Gomba Otieno and Kota Otieno, there weren’t many donors floating around the slums. The two got their name by dressing up as Maasai morans and carrying paint brushes instead of spears, all as a means of cleverly distinguishing themselves in a market flooded with fellow sign-writers.

The creative prowess of the two quickly attracted business. But it also drew the attention of a whole range of artistic souls from Kibera who, like M2, didn’t have formal training in the visual arts but shared the pair’s obvious desire to distinguish themselves artistically.

From their inception, Maasai Mbili were not simply sign writers. They were and still are artistic wizards who created signs that were imaginative works of art.

Among the early aspiring artist-sign writers to link up with the original M2 were a security guard named Rabala, the late George ‘Ashif’ Malamba (who local artists paid tribute to this week at Kuona Trust), Wycliffe Opondo, Solo 7 and a young high school graduate Kevin Irungu.

German exhibition

Kevo wasn’t among the first M2 artists to take their so-called ‘slum art’ overseas. That was the initial task of Gomba and Ashif, but more recently, Kevo has been among the M2 artists to take part in an international workshop and exhibition in Germany.

In fact, he just got back in time for the opening of his Jobless Corner Campus exhibition last Thursday night. He flew in from Bayreuth where his art is among that of seven other Africans exhibiting at the University of Bayreuth.

From Tuesday, Maasai Mbili together with Kuona Trust held an art exhibition-cum-art sale to assist the family of Ashif. Local artists generously donated their works as their way of honouring their friend, an artist whose creativity was key in devising the satiric ‘slum’-like style of M2’s artistry.

The other fundraising activity to which Kenyan artists donated their art is an online art auction aimed at assisting young footballers from Mukuru to attend an international soccer tournament in Sweden later this month.

The South B Sports Academy art auction/exhibition will also be hosted at Kuona Trust from June 19 through 21.

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