Perception Of Home

Kenya Mon 13-12-2004

Perception Of Home
By Ogova Ondego

The launch of Artistic perception of home, a book on art in Kenya on December 6, 2003, generated a lively debate that is still going on.

While Gallery Watatu curator Morris Amboso dismissed the publication as "a French book that has little to do with Kenya," Xavier Verhoest, an expatriate promoter of art not only questioned the aim of the exhibition that led to the publication of the catalogue but also said some of the art works in the book were not relevant to the theme of the exhibition, home.

Still artist Geraldine Robarts said that although art is about feelings, "no feelings come through Artistic perception of home." Admitting that many artists had a problem interpreting the bilingual theme-Artistic perception of home--writer Jean-Michel Kasbarian simply said, "How do artists in East Africa respond to theme-guided exhibitions?"

Kasbarian's argument that the French 'L'art de vivre la maison' and the English 'Artistic perception of home' mean different things to Francophone and Anglophone speakers, led Philda Ragland Njau of Paa ya Paa to remark that the East African concept of home was also different from the English and French ones; that it meant more than just the way 'people live in a house' in French or 'the interior of a house' of the English. "What is the East African meaning of home?" she threw the ball back to the audience gathered at the Serena Hotel where the catalogue was being launched.

Artist Tabitha wa Thuku took the challenge saying home means nyumbani, one's own rural home that one does not have to pay rent for. "To us Africans home isn't just a house but the spirit of the people who inhabit a house and the totality of everything else in it," she said.

And thus the launching of the 114-page book cataloguing the work of 36 artists in Kenya not only came to be but also confirmed the French Cultural and Cooperation Centre (FCCC) as the leading institution in Nairobi that relentlessly promotes artists and art in Kenya regularly.

Artistic perception of home is a follow up to the French-Kenyan Millennium Calendar that FCCC published and distributed to galleries, museums, collectors, artists, and art critics across the world in 2000. Its aim, said Jacques Depaigne, the then French ambassador to Kenya, was to "engender the necessary interest in the exposure and promotion of Kenyan art and open up new markets for Kenyan artists."

The 12 paintings featuring on the desk calendar had been selected from more than 140 submissions received from more than 50 artists.

Unlike Artistic perception of home, the French-Kenyan Millennium Calendar featured mainly black Kenyans. Didier Tressarieu, the managing director of Bamburi Cement Limited that funded the Artistic perception of home, says it was the indifference of Kenyans to their culture that led his company to team up with FCCC on this project in an attempt to help modify the negative attitude.

While he and his wife felt obliged to support art in Kenya, he said at the launch, "it is upon Kenyans themselves to present their interpretation of what their art and home are."

This catalogue is a commendable effort in documenting and putting creativity in Kenya on the global agenda. Kasbarian, an inspector of French schools now based in Beirut, begins by comparing and contrasting contemporary African art and its Western counterpart. Whereas the former tells stories, staging character and questioning their nature and social behaviour without severing links with the past, he contends, the latter is often an abstract interpretation of the world.

"In spite of colonisation which has forced Africa to regard its own cultural production through the eyes of foreign anthropologists (the Natural History Museum) or of aesthetics (Negro Art), and in spite of globalisation which has turned art into a market in which works are distributed, contemporary art in Africa has resisted the uniform patterns imposed by global images and ideas," Kasbarian writes.

But one feels these sweeping statements about African and East African art are not doing the catalogue any good. Where, for instance, can "Western modes of art (abstract impressionism, cinetism, figurative realism.)" that have nothing to do with Kenya and which Kasbarian has included in the book be placed-are they contemporary Western or contemporary African art?

If, indeed, "contemporary art in Africa has resisted the uniform patterns imposed by global images and ideas" as the author says it has, then how does he explain the works of art that have no reference to Kenya yet they are created by Kenyan or Kenya-based artists? Kasbarian points out that Kenyans are not living in a vacuum as the worldwide communication has exposed them to global ideas.

This would then contradict his view that African art tells stories and keeps close to traditions. How does he explain his own observation that some artists in Kenya create what sells rather than art for its aesthetic value? What exactly is modern or traditional African art? The author avoids this question.

The arguments presented by the author in his four-page introduction to the book beg more questions than it answers. This takes us to the next question: who is the target audience of the catalogue-the ordinary exhibition-goer or the Western-schooled art connoisseur?

The book is published by the French Cultural Centre and Bamburi Cement Company of Nairobi, Kenya. Each copy of this full colour glossy catalogue arranged thematically in six chapters retails for Sh2000 (about US$27).

Posted By: Africancolours.com

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