Obama: The Living Ancestor

Kenya Mon 19-01-2009

Obama: The Living Ancestor
By David Kaiza

Otieno Kota’s woven and stitched metal artworks rust fast, but lying in the open at Kuona Trust in Nairobi, they quickly look aged, even “artless” and profound.

All that stitching done with steel wires looks daunting, still Kota has used this medium to represent now President Barrack Obama three times.

One particular piece, which he fashioned out of a Congolese mask that he bought in an art and craft market, is set in a charred frame and titled Obama; it looks enigmatic.

Obama: The Living Ancesto

“A living ancestor,” he says of America’s first black president.

If this sounds somewhat worshipful, it is mild compared to a papier mache representation of Obama made by a Chicago Art School undergraduate, David Cordero. Dressing the Obama image in white gown with a red cloth draped across the shoulder in popular biblical representation, with Obama’s hand raised in a gesture of benediction and a neon halo over the head, the artist leaves little doubt about what he means.

This work, called Blessing, attracted comment that US Democrats were blaspheming, forcing Obama spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, to issue a statement: "While we respect First Amendment rights and don't think the artist was trying to be offensive, Senator Obama, as a rule, isn't a fan of art that offends religious sensibilities."

Obama as Christ has appeared in more than one depiction. But a painting by US artist, Dan Lacey, displayed at www.artofobama.com, showed what Obama mania is doing to popular imagination. It depicts the crash landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River.

Lacey painted the front of the plane and in the cockpit a steady Captain Chesley Sullenberger with his hands on the controls. But there is someone else in the cockpit steadying Sullenberger’s hands. In an almost classical European depiction, a naked black man riding a white unicorn is guiding Sullenberger’s plane to safety.

This figure is Obama.

Another piece of graphic art piece, done by David Kakumei, does not mythologise Obama, but the presence of a computer mouse in Obama’s hand says it clearly: “Obama saves”.

Not since Lenin, Stalin, Mao – and yes, Hitler - has a single political figure been the subject of so much art; never on this scale. The first four were tyrants running propaganda machinery. Hardly any of their images sprung up spontaneously from every corner of the earth.

The induction into the Smithsonian Museum of Shepard Fairey’s iconic red, white and blue poster image of Obama entitled HOPE was in a symbolic way a depiction of the world watching itself watching Obama. The electricity that Fairey’s image produced was already there, but this hardly explains why Obama has become such a magnet to artists. “For a black man to become president of the USA is strange,” Kota says reticently.

^{Obama By Patrick Kinuthia}

“He comes like an inspiration”, says Kenyan artist, Patrick Kinuthia. “Nothing is impossible and he did it.”

In all the depictions of Obama, whether on T-shirts, on the sails of a yacht, made from high-tension wire or printed on khangas, the artists see in him ideal. He is smiling. His head is raised heavenward. He is a thoughtful, contemplative man. He is a healer, a saver-of-life.

“He is a good-looking man,” Kinuthia explains. “He has strong, determined features, and as an artist I try to pick out what stands out most.” But he goes on to explain: “It’s nothing to do with physical features. It is what he represents right now – he has an image of responsibility.”

Since he erupted into world consciousness, there have been countless artistic depictions of Obama and his aura; but even more telling in the number of websites devoted purely to Obama art. www.artofobama is perhaps the most worshipful of all. www.obamaartreport is more extensive, providing visitors with clear, crisp images; www.artforobama.com, www.obamaart.com, and www.artobama.com carry similar themes while www.obamainkenya.com has images of Obama cakes on sale at Wilson Airport in Nairobi and includes mention of an Obama church service.

^{Shepard Fairey's iconic Obama image as seen on a car sticker

Photo: Andrew Njoroge/AfricanColours.net}

In explaining the attractiveness of Obama to artists, Mark Featherstone, a sociologist at the University of Keele, refers to it as a yearning for utopia, an impulse artists perhaps have more than other people. “Like all real utopias, or utopian figures, before they are painted and fleshed out, he embodies the promise of a better future for everybody,” Featherstone writes.

In an analytical article in the January 10 issue of Newsweek, Jeremy McCarter says Obama does not only inspire popular art but is the product of the imagination of artists; Obama as the future art has been waiting for: “At their best, our great artists have achieved in their work the kind of harmony that so often eludes us in life, firing our imaginations with advance glimpses of the more perfect union that the Founders envisioned but made only limited progress in achieving,” Carter writes.

For a country described as “racist,” this is also a harmony of colours. “We know, for instance, that in America, blacks and whites, Jews and gentiles, highbrows and regular folk should all coexist in peace. Even if we're still not sure how that union will look, the catchall beauty of "Rhapsody in Blue" tells us how it sounds. The most vibrant stream of our culture has been slowly, fitfully molding us into what Randolph Bourne called "trans-national America."

Part of Obama’s popularity is that he is NOT out-going president, George Bush. Featherstone foresees a lurking trap in this, seeing what he calls “negativity” in this outpouring.

“Obama currently represents utopia negatively, by virtue of the fact that he is not Dubya,” he writes. “Unfortunately, this pristine unreality cannot endure and we will not be able to maintain the empty image of the Obama utopia as negative expression of Bush dystopia for much longer than it takes for the comic fool to hand over the presidency to new pretender.

Whether Obama can deliver on his promise of ‘change’ will rely on his ability to flesh out his negative critique of the Bush dystopia with a positive, realistic, imaginary of his own.”

Not all representations of Obama adore the man. www.bearpit.net is a virulent anti-Obama website with images of a menacing, grimacing Obama. He is also represented as a Nazi carrying aloft the swastika flag; www.christian-forum.net has carried articles that say Obama is the anti-Christ.

Many of the representations of Obama are commercially driven. There is a demand for Obama, and that means money. In Nairobi, Obama khangas cost on average, Ksh600 ($7) more than the ordinary items. An indication of just how lucrative this industry is that Shepard Fairey made $400,000 from sales of his posters alone – money he says he ploughed back into the Obama campaign. At the Sarit Centre mall in Nairobi, an artist who signs off as aRt bErt, does pencil sketches of Obama which he sells for Ksh 1000 ($12) a piece.

It is too early to know how much the entire industry has generated, and it does not look as if it will end with the inauguration. Says Kinuthia: “I have been on a trail. An artist has to chronicle his time, and Obama is part of the times we are in, and he is an attractive choice."
Echoing a sentiment doubtless on the minds of all those who have created portraits of Obama, Kota says wistfully; “I am always wondering how these pictures can reach him.”

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