Mother-daughter showcase art at Talisman

Leena Shah is convinced her artistic spirit runs in the family, on her father’s side.

“It all stems from my grandmother, my father’s mother. Virtually all her children are in artistic careers of some kind,” she says as she glances out at her own and her daughter Rani’s paintings, hanging all around the Talisman Restaurant in Nairobi.

That hereditary line of artists has not been broken this generation as the current mother and daughter exhibition at the Talisman testifies. However, Rani, aged 14, is not available to speak for herself as she is normally either in school at Hillcrest Secondary or engaged in either dancing, dramatising, drumming, or studying to ensure her academics match her talents for the arts.

“Rani has been painting with me ever since she was small,” recalls the proud mother who assumed they would share the Talisman’s many rooms and cozy alcoves to display their art more equitably. But that was not meant to be.

“The curator selected the works to be shown and only a few of Rani’s were among those [47] chosen,” says Leena.

One has to understand, however, that Leena has travelled the world, studying fine art and visiting the finest galleries and museums from New York and Washington DC to London and Johannesburg..

The art that grabs your attention the moment you walk in the restaurant’s front door. If you imagine Leena’s ‘Prince’ resembles the style of the late Black American artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, you are correct.

“I love Basquiat’s art. I even made a special trip to London just to see a major exhibition of his work some years back,” she recalls.

There is one other smaller piece deep inside the restaurant that reflects the same Basquiat influence. Otherwise, Leena’s more than 40 other paintings reflect a range of influences. Many are abstracts, revealing her love of layering different colours, paints, and assorted found objects.

The best expression of her inclination to see the aesthetic potential in sundry discarded things is her ‘Mask.’

“The base of a broken wine glass which became one of the eyes of the mask,” says Leena, who also added assorted seeds and beads to a work that is part of a themed area near a cozy fireplace.

“2020 was a difficult time for us all. Many were fearful of the coronavirus, but all of us have been forced to grow,” she adds.

The darkness of those early days of the dreaded pandemic is reflected in one small abstract piece that hangs just near a larger semi-abstract work that she entitles ‘My Home.’ “There’s a pond just near our place that dazzles with sunlight during the day, but at night, it turns pitch black,” she says referring to the black, oblique-shaped ‘pond’ reflecting the mood of that time.

The most graphic piece in the show is still in that ‘Covid corner’ where a man, outlined in turquoise blue is literally ‘Crying for Change.’ What is equally revealing in the piece are the eyes painted all around his head. Eyes are apparent in a number of her works. But in this particular work, the eyes look wary and worried that the killer virus could be hovering anywhere nearby.

Yet just across the room is another Covid-19 - inspired piece. Only this one is feminine, full of curves and spheres, and painted in pastels. Leena notes, “I even gave her a mask!” Discounting the fact that she has entitled the piece, ‘Corona Virus Settles in Kenya’ Leena has been one of those Kenyan artists who made the most, artistically, of the lockdown times to paint and create, based on the mental temperature of those times.

“I see green everywhere,” she says as we shift to another area of the Talisman where we can see one of Rani’s sweet green floral pieces.

Leena is talking about what has been going on in her end of Nairobi, Karen, where the gardens have gone wild while their owners have been quarantined indoors.

“For me, my art isn’t just a passion; it’s a form of meditation and even a kind of healing therapy,” she says.