Ever since Polka Dot Gallery in Nairobi shut down, Tewa Thadde has been a roving art curator, meeting artists in their studios and holding pop-up exhibitions all over town.
His current exhibition at Nairobi’s Kilimani Primary School is taking place in his own art gallery space, with the help of his friends at the Organic Farmer’s Market and the Kilimani Project Foundation.
“It started with my having planned with Ismael [Kateregga] to have a solo exhibition of his art as a follow-up to the last one we had for him at Polka Dot,” Tewa tells BDLife after the official opening of the new Gallery on Saturday, May 21.
In the interim, Ismael had gotten to know John Scully, one of the founders of the Organic Farmer's Market who had already begun collecting the Ugandan’s oil paintings and was happy to promote his art.
So once Scully teamed up with Tewa and the artist, Tewa found the space, and Scully with his business partner Dennis Andaye, enlisted Tom Herr to construct the walls on which Tewa would hang Ismael’s art as well as works by 11 Sudanese and Ugandan artists in another wing of the new Kilimani art gallery.
So now Tewa has his own gallery space, and 35 paintings by Ishmael covering three-quarters of the walls.
Ismael deserves the space he has been afforded in this exhibition which he entitles ‘Ubuntu’ meaning togetherness. Many of his works are filled with crowds, situated either in Kampala markets or at the Dhow races in Lamu, or at public protests in London, Paris, or Minneapolis which are either anti-war, pro-Palestinian, or pro-‘Black Lives Matter.’
Working exclusively with oil paints and a sharp palette knife, Ismael often uses photography to remind him of the images he wants to capture in his art. Thus, his paintings are quite realistic with just a touch of impressionism, especially around the edges of almost every one of his works.
Do we have to ask him why he often does not cover his canvas with paint? His response is instant as if he has been asked this question before.
“For me to get my message across, I don’t need to fill the canvas,” he says.
He is right. With or without every inch of his canvas covered in colour, Ismael creates vivid effects with his delicate and clear-cut knife strokes.
Whether his eye is focused on ’Garbage Contractors’, ‘Shoe Repair’ men, ‘Fishermen in Lamu’, or Protesters in Paris, he pays serious attention to his topic, detailing all the fine points to make the viewer feel she is seeing an authentic moment in real-time.
The other thing about Ismael’s realism is that he paints from a long-distance perspective. You may see his collection of ‘Dhows’ or ‘Boda Boda’ drivers or Foot Traffic in Kampala, but all of his images are viewed from a distance, meaning there is never a close up look at a ‘Street Wanderer” or one person having lunch during his “Lunchtime Meeting’.
That should not matter since that is Ismael’s style. What is more, we can still see the deliberate detailing of the activities of the characters in his art.
Ismael’s is the main attraction of ‘Ubuntu’. But around two or three corners in the new gallery, you will find a mini-space where a whole wide range of works by 11 exciting painters reside.
They deserve a much larger detail space. Where Ismael’s art uses lots of baby blues and light greys in most of his paintings, the ones in the last corridor and closet space are hot with artists like Abushariaa Ahmed and Wafa Salah using bold blues while Hussein Halfawi, Khalid Abdelrahman, and even Muramuzi John Bosco use red hot reds.
And where Ismael depicts everyday life experiences in a realistic style, virtually all the art featured in the second half of Tewa’s Kilimani show is abstract or semi-abstract.
It is also art one should make an effort to come and see since much of it is striking, engaging, beautiful, and thought-provoking.
The paintings range from Sh50,000 to Sh500,000.
The 11 painters at the exhibition to raise funds for Kilimani Primary’s Food fund include Abushariaa Ahmed, Almogera Abdulbagi, Ameer Yousif, Bob Wanyama, Damulira Shira, Galal Yousif, Hussein Halfawi, Lukwaga Saad, Muramuzi John Bosco, Wafa Salah, and Yarmeen Abdallah.
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Note: The results are not exact but very close to the actual.
