Artist’s mask paintings sold out at solo show

Masks have many different meanings for Maliza Kiasuwa, which is one reason why they are pervasive in her current solo exhibition at the Tribal Gallery in Nairobi’s Loresho.

“Masks often had a spiritual and symbolic significance in our pre-colonial African cultures,” the artist told BDLife a few days after her successful January 27 opening in which every one of her paintings got bought on the spot.

But she adds that there is another reason why she was inspired to paint masks in what she described as a ‘naïve’ style.

“I was inspired by my children and the way they draw faces with a kind of innocence and simplicity,” she says.

She wanted those qualities to be reflected in her art.

And there is another reason Maliza’s show is focused on masks. It is because masks can conceal what one is feeling and thinking inside.

Paintings like ‘Hide your Fear 1 and 2’ and ‘Fear has many faces’ reveal one more motivation for her bringing nearly a dozen paintings featuring a combination of faces and masks to her first Nairobi show in several years. (She had a major exhibition in Washington, DC in 2021).

The title of her current exhibition, ‘Prima Facia’ is a legal term referring to first impressions and the first feeling that one has upon meeting a new person. The feeling is intuitive, even instinctive, and in many cases, that first impression is consistent with later dealings with that individual.

Maliza has two paintings entitled ‘First Look’ (or prima facia) at Tribal Gallery, one with an avocado green background and turquoise blue face, the other with a blood-red background and a face that is pale pastel green. Their facial features are enigmatic, even as Maliza suggests that most elements in these works have symbolic significance.

There is also an element of humour in all her portraits, whether they represent masked beings or transparent faces. Each one opens up like a picture puzzle having different facial features. All of their mouths are shaped differently.

“I think the ones with big mouths talk a lot, while those with smaller mouths are more subdued,” she says with a twinkling smile. Every nose is also different. But it is the eyes that let you know the artist is intentionally giving each face saucer-shaped wide-eyes to draw you into each artwork.

Maliza’s colour schemes also contribute to the apparent simplicity of her work. Painted mainly in acrylics on either canvas, paper, or cardboard, her most flamboyant use of colour is created in day-glo pink and lime green with spray paint on raffia grass and textile.

Entitled ‘Every face is born with a thousand masks to go with it’ the feeling in this painting is psychedelic. It is the one that could have been sold several times.

In Maliza’s previous exhibitions, she has emphasized her use of organic materials. In this one, her four woolly totems reflect that same love of natural fibres.

But clearly, she had other ideas to convey. Like conservation and recycling of waste which she reveals in works like ‘Plurifacie’ and ‘Face the Reality’ both of which are painted on up-cycled cardboard.

“The canvas I use in this show is also recycled,” she adds. ‘Pllurifacie’ is a particularly interesting piece since it is the only one in the exhibition in which more than two or three faces are drawn and painted on a solid black background.

Nearly two dozen different faces in three rows are tightly fitted on what initially looks like a blackboard, the kind that one finds in primary schools.

For an artist who spent most of the last two years in lockdown with her family up in Naivasha, Maliza’s Prima Facie exhibition reminds us of the artist’s fertile imagination given that all her faces and masks are distinct, unique. Not one is a duplicate of another.

Some observers have alluded to Maliza’s art as resembling that of the late African-American graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat whose art is now selling for millions of dollars at international art auctions. There is some truth to that suggestion, but Maliza comes from a completely different background and sensibility.

Her mother brought her daughter up in the Romanian Orthodox Church, which might explain how so many crosses appear in her portraits. Her father was Congolese which explains her affinity for pre-colonial African cultures.

And her training was in nursing although art has always played an important role in her life. One thing she and Basquiat share is that childlike simplicity that comes from the heart.