Urban street life erected at Circle Art Gallery

Wajukuu’s ‘Systems to Emptiness’ transformed Circle Art Gallery into a giant installation at the show’s opening last Wednesday night in Nairobi.

The darkened, black-draped corridor, set to sounds of urban street life, was meant to be an immersive experience.

“The idea was to give people a feeling that they’re entering our world at Wajukuu,” says Ngugi Waweru, referring to their art centre based in the informal settlement of Nairobi's Mukuru Lunga Lunga.

The centre is what Ngugi and Shabu Mwangi founded years ago to open up a creative space where aspiring artists and children could come to learn about art and to express themselves.

Fortunately, once you got through that narrow tunnel, you arrived safely inside the gallery where two sculpted installations are by Ngugi and Shabu Mwangi, the two Wajukuu artists behind the show, cryptically entitled ‘Systems to Emptiness’.

“It’s a metaphor,” explains Shabu, referring not only to the show’s title but to his creation, entitled ‘Wrapped Reality’.

It’s the installation at the far end of the gallery, a six-foot sculpted piece of driftwood shaped vaguely like a man who Shabu says is ‘melting’ or dissipating under the weight of his impoverished everyday life. His burden is symbolised by his reed-woven ‘hat’ shaped with the same material that chicken cages are made of.

Ngugi adds that chicken feel oppressed when they are confined to that cage. They feel relieved or liberated once they’re released from it. But that feeling of freedom is short-lived, he continues, since they are soon slaughtered.

“Human beings are like chicken in that they join systems, (including educational systems), where they are promised success and happiness once they get through the system [or complete their education],” says Shabu.

“Instead, it enslaves them, because once they graduate, they don’t find jobs. They find poverty and emptiness as a result of the failure of the systems, including systems of governance,” he adds.

The strips of barbed wire scattered around the base of driftwood, he says, are symbolic of the boundaries or lack of freedom that poor people face.

It is a powerful message and matched by Ngugi’s installation. He has created a kind of pyramid made out of broken bicycle chains, the ones (when intact) power the local jua kali knife sharpeners who roam informal settlements. The pyramid is surrounded by discarded knives that have been sharpened until they are useless.

Calling his installation by a Kikuyu proverb, “Kahiu kohiga munu gatemaga mwene ’, Ngugi says it means, “A sharp knife cuts its owner.” He explains that the knife is like a system that people clamour to get into.

Call it consumerism or capitalism, but it’s a system that compels people to always want more, more fast food, faster cell phones, bigger TV screens.

Each demand is like a sharpening of the knife until the knife is finished and the consumer has little to show for what he’s achieved. Again, the system can only lead to emptiness.

Both artists are sending profound messages about the way they see social systems and their treatment of especially poor people.

Their installations are among several works that they have created to take with them next month when they, together with several other members of their Wajukuu collective, head to Kassel, Germany. That is where Documenta 15, the largest art fair in Germany, is happening from June through September.

Wajukuu was invited to participate in Documenta 15 by the Indonesian artists collective, ruangrupa, which is curating this year’s art fair. Ten artists, including Shabu and Ngugi, will be representing Wajukuu since the theme of this year’s fair is communal sharing like what Wajukuu does, especially as they teach and mentor children in art.

“We aim to use art to empower the community, especially children and young artists,” says Shabu. Noting that the colonial experience stripped Africans of their cultural identities and heritage, he believes art has the power to revive people’s culture and identity.

“Kassel was destroyed at the end of World War 2, which is one reason Documenta was started [in 1955],” says Shabu. “Art was used to bringing life back into the city so that now, Documenta is said to be the largest art fair in Europe,” he adds.

In addition to carrying their knives and driftwood with them to Kassel, the artists are bringing a documentary film that they created with the assistance of several supporters, namely Goethe Institute, the German Embassy, and the Lambert Foundation.

“We’ll also be bringing my book, called ‘The Mirror’ which has some of my poetry and my paintings,” says Shabu.