'The Way We Like It' Art Exhibition

Kenya Thu 24-01-2008

'The Way We Like It' Art Exhibition
By a Correspondent

Some of Nairobi’s most respected artists came together at an art exhibition in an initiative to raise funds for the thousands of internally displaced people throughout Kenya. The exhibition which officially opened at the Village Market shopping centre on the night of 24th January will run for a week until 3rd February.

The show’s curator (and an exhibitor as well) Xavier Verhoest, said that he invited selected artists to give some of their best works that depicted how something they felt strongly about.

“I was looking not for what can sell but for something that is an expression of an emotion – the artist’ of the society’s. Something that can tell something on how to intervene in this world,” said Verhoest.

Most of the pieces were done long before the post election violence that rocked Kenya, although a few had been done during the violent period right after the announcement of President Mwai Kibaki’s re election into office.

The most poignant of the paintings at the show was a self portrait by Richard Kimathi. It is supposed to show his sorrow and self reflection at what has happened in the last few weeks in Kenya. Kimathi more than achieves his purpose. In the words of the curator Xavier Verhoest, the self portrait is ‘disturbingly brilliant’.

If you ask me, I’d say it is deep. It calls out to the deep within us. It makes us face what is uncomfortable about and within us. It makes us face our evil, our own darkness, and given the context of the exhibition, perhaps ask ourselves how our share of evil has contributed to the situation in which we find ourselves.

It expresses the feelings running through Kenya right now.

Then there was the main piece by Sam Hopkins, placed in the middle of the exhibition hall and rightly so. A huge piece of glass cut out in the shape of Kenya’s map is placed on inflated balloons. And that is all. The installation has no title – but then again it speaks volumes even in its fragile silence, to show the precarious situation that Kenya as a whole is in.

Each artist wrote a small poem or statement of how they like it – not just in regard to the current political mess – but generally how they like it in life.

“We as artists can not separate ourselves from the events that unfold around us,” said Verhoest. “On a physical level, the politics of the day affect the artist just as they affect any other person – lost business, lost opportunities.

But on a spiritual level, the events cause you as an artist to move into a war zone of yourself, to move away from a comfort zone and to explore emotions and feelings and express them. It will cause the genuine artist not to reproduce work just to earn some money”.

Eltayeb Dawelbeit, a Sudanese painter based in Kenya was one of the artists whose work was on display. For him, the political unrest in Kenya disturbs him just as it disturbs any Kenyan, perhaps even more so clearly. “I have seen what war can reduce a country to,” he said.

“To me Kenya now feels like home. I am attached to this place and it is sad to see this happen here. I want life to go back to normal. But all the same, even when things are sad and going bad, we have to give hope”.

Dawelbeit’s pieces – two both inspired from his travels in Egypt and Zanzibar – are untitled. “I leave them open to your own interpretation. I do not want to guide the thoughts of the observer”

What you see is what you see!

Part of the proceeds from exhibition will go to the Kenya Red Cross Society who in turn will use it help the internally displaced.

Posted By: Diana Achieng

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