Necks With A Mind Of Their Own: Fitsum’s Latest Exhibition In Nairobi

Eritrea Tue 13-01-2009

Necks With A Mind Of Their Own: Fitsum’s Latest Exhibition In Nairobi
By David Kaiza/AfricanColours.com

The Gardener’s constant gaze is somewhat enigmatic; the artist has not just captured his “portrait” – but has got character as well.

By the blueness of his face, the time might be a cool morning. But it’s the eyes, embedded at the very depth of the painting, that strike up rapport; the gleaming, liquid pupils seem to gaze just beyond your shoulders until you look at his right eye and suspect he might be slightly cross-eyed. Then you see the gaze is fully on you. But it is a knowing gaze and set in his charismatic face, makes this work perhaps one of Fitsum’s more intriguing.

The Gardner is from a previous show, not part of the exhibition that opened at Talisman, Karen in Nairobi from January 13 to February 3.

Head vs stripes by Fitsum Berhe

Head vs stripes by Fitsum Berhe

However, it contains all the elements that are Fitsum Berhe Woldelibanos’ signature – close-ups on the human face, intensity, some hint of the spiritual and a lot of blue. And red too, except in The Gardener, there is the merest dash of red.
Big canvases and looming female heads, male heads set in smaller frames, frenzied dashes of colour made in broad strokes that look as if done with industrial brushes, define this show.

Depending on which colour strikes you best, it is either a red or blue show. Given the cloistered rug, stucco and smoked wood ambience of Talisman, the show strikes up an air of refined disharmony.

“The love of blue takes you to red,” Fitsum says, adding paradoxically that “red is the other blue.”
But let’s leave paradoxes – of which Fitsum seems to have a lot - for later.

His work is centred on people, and his canvases are often titled after his models so you have at the show, Ali, Ali’s Profile, Nafuu, Steve with an Apple, varying into Waiting for the Fishermen, Fisherman’s Wife, Swahili Boy and Young Girl.
Outside of these he captures human forms and comes up with more abstract titles like Walking through Marrakech,

Two Kanga Sellers. These are deeply evocative titles but in the case of the first, you have to believe that it is evocative to accept it for it can sound touristic.
All without exception, the action in Fitum’s paintings take place on the human face and there is a lot happening on those faces. He captures them in rapt attention, in throes of some intensity whether of ecstasy or thought; spiritual, hypnotic, engaged.

Young girl by Fitsum Berhe

He has developed a predilection for the Kenyan coast and sounds interesting when explaining his executions of the characters he has met there: “Lamu colours, old, rusty like a history,” he says of subjects he has painted in Lamu. “A reflection of the history of Lamu.”

So you can’t take him at face value. Hence, what the artist intends to communicate comes then through a welter of complexes; a rapt combination of colours here, a shocking mix of elements there; the overly long neck that can make you the viewer feel that you are toppling over. Yet the artist tends to keep away from abstracting the human form.

This makes his work strangely elating for while his rendering of realistic forms gives an existentialist edge to his subject matter, what he layers over those forms is abstract, his usage of colour frequently surreal, even whimsical.

So there is the barest hint of dichotomy, which appears unintended. But because he depicts mostly human faces, these many elements are dramatised on the human face; the face as the arena on which the drama is played. It makes sense to think of it as “reflection of the history” on human faces.

If as arena, then the human face is called upon to bear alot. “It’s not like a landscape,” he says. “The colours in a face come from what surrounds them. Emotionally, you are surrounded by certain things. By the sea, you might get turquoise-ness. But you get all kinds of expressions.”

This is interesting. But you have to be told to see it, for without this subtext, what comes forth is the spiritual-emotional intensity that his canvases communicate. At this level, all of them are variations on a theme. It is when an explanation has been offered that you start to understand his presentations.

Swahili Boy by Fitsum Berhe

Fitsum is an eloquent explainer of his work – as eloquent as when rendering it – but it is eloquence which is self-aware and cannot be described as modest. Often, this can appear on the canvas. The spiritual intensity is intended though, for the artist talks continuously about religious symbolisms, about the moon – he loves the moon and says he keeps a lunar calendar.

His relationship with his colours is somewhat esoteric – “red is the other blue”; “Blue is a very humanly colour. If you look up, it’s very easy to get into blue”; “Colour becomes experience; it has to get into you.” These colours, he says, he prefers to use in their “flammable state”. But while this attachment of significance to colours maybe fascinating to hear it can also be too personal to communicate comfortably across.

“For many, many times, I want to do a whole figure but for some reason, it does not go beyond the shoulder.”

By way of speculation, when he does whole figures as in Steve with Apple or Two Kanga sellers, the focus shifts from the face so the artist has to come up with activity as if to have the hands do something, have the feet burried in a jumble of kangas. All that deeply felt intensity is lost on these works.

Yet some persuasiveness takes over as the ruling force in these large studies. Steve with Apple is an interesting study and Two Kanga Sellers is a resplendent colour balance. All that heated red, all that blue and maroon that occupy the broad, left hand lower side of the canvas is magnificently balanced off by the dash of raw white. While you have to wait for him to explain that this raw white is beach sand gleaming in the sun, he has done something technically persuasive which is not the same with the portraits.

Hence, what Fitsum is not too enthusiastic about, he renders bountifully. Not that his buyers are too drawn to this anyway. They love what Fitsum loves and this kind of love is best handled carefully.

Moving Profile by Fitsum Berhe

He is drawn to portraits and there, the eyes have it. When his models have closed their eyes, they communicate an intense, internal spirituality. When the eyes are open, they have the hypnosis of the gorgon – their power to draw and hold, like Henry Mukasa’s unblinking figures. This kind of focus can win you firm fans.

He also has an attraction to the female neck, which he sometimes abstracts, giving them spiraling, snake-like attenuation - “necks that seem to have a mind of their own”.

On the whole, this particular exhibition is about dash and perfume and clashing mostly oddly complementary colours. Already his Nafuu marches though it does not equal some of the lingering magnetism of Daniel. There is the direct gaze. There is the liquidity in the colours.

The two views of Ali, the fisherman’s wife carry the close study of previous works by Fitsum, for the brush lingers on details like they did on former works such as Faizal, and what is surely going to remain one of his better works, Daniel, a gardener whose face rendered in blue contains living, sometimes charming but mostly intriguing pupils.

Whoever purchases Walking through Marrakech will have something worth keeping. Studies in Space is an abstract piece that needs some intimate appreciation of colour and ordering of space.

Walking through Marrakech is one of the largest pieces on display. The figure painted in there is larger than life hence this intensity is re-enacted on scale; becoming overpowering, it will take command of the room it’s displayed in unless that room is large enough to contain it.

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Your Comments

edu: What a lovely work, Fantastic

sss.salimini sile: Good work . Indeed, I like the way you have focused to the centre of attraction with fairlygood colour combination. its good. Sile

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