Arts

Lips, Colourful Quilled Paper at E. Africa Expo

art1

Painting by Tanzanian artist Haji Chilonga. PHOTO | MARGARETTA WA GACHERU | NMG

Fatema Qureish was the only paper quilling artist to exhibit in the East African Art Biennale which ended earlier this year. The rest were painters, with a few sculptors and multimedia artists.

‘Moving Arts across East African Borders’ was the eight edition of the regional Biennale that began last November. It was a travelling show and had a stop-over in Nairobi at Alliance Francaise in January.

But Kenya was just one of six countries that the Tanzania-based organisers included in this inaugural touring show that introduced a wide array of East African artists (and several international ones as well). The other four countries were Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Zanzibar.

The vast majority of artists exhibiting in what was billed the ‘Biggest Art Show in East Africa’ were Tanzanian. This is understandable as the Biennale itself has its home base in Dar es Salaam. The Biennale was co-founded back in 2003 by Professor Elias Jengo of University of Dar es Salaam and the Belgian artist Yves Goscinny. The same year, the East Africa Art Biennale Association was established headed by Prof. Jengo.

Nine Kenyans

Mr Goscinny now lives in Belgium and serves as the Biennale’s international liaison officer. But having been born and raised in the DR Congo, he’d spent many years working in Africa. His field was development, but his interest in art led to his settling for a time in Tanzania and opening an art gallery of his own in 2002. Nonetheless, since all the previous Biennales never set foot out of Dar, there had never been much regional or global attention until 2017 when effort was made to raise funds to enable the biennale to go out on tour. This year, it was funded by France, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and other regional and international bodies.

Fatema is one of only nine Kenyan artists to be part of the Biennale and says she only heard about it from a Tanzanian friend. Others were Tabitha wa Thuku, Victor Binge, Kawira Mwirichia, Joy Maringa, Catherine Mavyala, Kezia Wambungu, Rosetta Makali and Thomas Ngede.

What was fascinating about the Kenyan contribution to this multinational show is that Fatema wasn’t the only artist doing remarkable art. She was the only one to create images of Kenyan wildlife out of minute paper strips, tightly wound and meticulously placed (with delicate dabs of glue) onto board.

Lips art

She created images that were both two- and three-dimensional. One only hopes she holds a solo exhibition this year since Kenyans could love to learn how to fashion this refined art that Fatema learned while studying in India.

But then, besides Fatema, no one else in the exhibition (which included no less than 80 artists) created something called lip art. But that’s the skill that the make-up artist Joy Maringa introduced at the biennale. She claims her favourite canvases are human lips!

Foreign artists

The other Kenyans are painters. Only Rosetta Makali is a digital artist who uses computer imagery to fashion her finished artworks. And Kawira Mwirichia shared original textile designed based on her concern for a ‘Revolutionary Type Love’.

There were nine international artists who took part. All nine had some connection to East Africa, either having been born or having working here for a time. Several were Belgian, one Briton, one Norwegian, another Indian and a couple of West Africans.