Artist works closely with disabled ceramicist to create stunning collage

Collage

Lately, he’s added a new element to his multimedia collage paintings that has generated surprising results.

Broken bits of ceramic tile might not seem special or out of the ordinary for an artist who has used broken mirror shards and other bits of what others see as useless waste or garbage for many years.

But ceramic tiles, pots and platters made by a young man who’s had cerebral palsy all his life are special indeed.

Kamal has known Prashant Shah since he was a child because he’s friends with the young man’s family.

Kamal has also witnessed the transformation that Prashant underwent once his parents dreamed up the idea of taking him to ceramics classes.

“They even got him a small kiln, which has enabled Prashant to create beautiful pots and platters,” says Kamal who offered to take all the ceramic bits that got broken during the creative process and see if he could work them into his art.

As it turns out, some of Kamal’s most recent collage paintings make brilliant use of Prashant’s broken tiles.

Embedding the bits into his colourful concoction of textured paste, Kamal says he works by trial and error, ever experimenting to see what sort of inspiration will emerge as he mixes up his media, using painters’ knives, brushes or even sticks of glue.

Experimenting

Having studied literature, history of art and textile design at Leeds University before returning to Kenya in the mid-1970s, Kamal never went to art school per se. But in a sense, he feels that is one reason he’s never felt constrained to follow artistic protocol or set procedures for either painting, drawing, doodling or designing.

Instead, he’s always been open to not only experimenting but also to collaborating with others like Prashant and artisans like Jared Obito who assists him with everything from framing to finding the plastic bags that Kamal reconstructs into cone-like containers for keeping his homemade texture paste fresh and moist.

Currently, Kamal literally has a house-full of paintings of all size and shapes, some abstract, others semi-abstract and quite a few portraits of both beautiful women and androgynous beings who could be either women or men.

Most of his paintings haven’t been seen by the public since Kamal is waiting for the right time to expose some of his most stunning works to the art-loving public at large.

Part of his dilemma is that his art is appreciated not only in Kenya where he’s had solo and group shows everywhere from the National Museums of Kenya to Alliance Francaise to the late RaMoMa Museum.

India

He’s also had highly successful exhibitions in India, both in Goa and Mumbai, and several in the UK, most recently at the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London.

Ironically, despite his prolific bent, Kamal currently has only two of his collaborative works with Prashant in his home studio. That’s largely because the young man’s art is highly sought after by members of his family and their friends.

But the two pieces that Kamal has are exhilarating works of art, one that’s a collage infused with what looks like highly energized beings, the other filled with faces that look like African dignitaries.

Using a slew of earthen colours, from ochre and a rich deep red to shades of yellow and gold, Kamal’s textured backgrounds are also inclusive of Kenyan blues and garden greens.

It is on these bright colours that he’s embedded Prashant’s broken tiles, also combining them with other assorted elements (Turkana aluminium, Maasai beads, broken mirrors and the like) to create collage paintings that are some of Kamal’s most inspired works to date.

Adventure

I have always been a fan of Kamal’s art and have had the privilege of seeing it evolve steadily over decades.

One of the things about his artwork that I like is the way aspects of it remain the same, such as his consistent work with mixed media.

But at the same time, his art is ever-changing, sometimes in subtle ways that may not be instantly apparent, but his daring style of shifting from abstract expressionism (inspired he says by the Russian artist Kandinsky) to semi-abstract work (again inspired by many artists but especially by Picasso) to straight portraiture and colourful collage art conveys a spirit of adventure and creative enthusiasm that are the essence of why individuals pursue the arts.

[email protected]