Four Questions For Elimo Njau

Kenya Thu 16-07-2009

Four Questions For Elimo Njau
By a Correspondent

Elimo Njau, the co-founder with Ezekiel Mphalele of ChemChemi Creative Arts Centre in 1964 and founder of Paa ya Paa Arts Centre in 1965, is an icon and sage of East African art. The muralist, poet, painter and sculptor has been focused on creative expression all his life. Before coming to Kenya, he was an Associate Professor of Education and Fine Art at Makerere University.

His first work in Kenya was a commission job 51 years ago, to paint five monumental fresco murals based on the Gospel story at Murunga’s Anglican Cathedral. Coming to Kenya in the early Sixties, Njau allies himself with artists and writers from all over Africa, including Mphalele, Okot p’Bitek, Hillary Ng’weno, Jonathan Kariara, Taban lo Liong, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

And once he established Paa ya Paa, even more artists from around the region and the world attended artists’ workshops and residencies for cultural workers that he organized. This all makes Njau something of an authority on East African culture and art. However, Njau is unapologetic and unflinching in his appraisal of where he feels African art has been, where it is at present and where it is going in the future

Q: How do you look at the past in relation to East African art?

EN: East Africa had the good fortune of having a well established School of Fine Art established by Margaret Trowell by the 1940s at Makerere [University in Uganda]. So by the Fifties, you saw highly qualified African artists coming out of Makerere like Louis Mwanyiki, Sam Ntiro, Rosemary Karuga [and Elimo]….Nonetheless, everyone that comes to Kenya from abroad tends to claim that they are starting from Ground Zero, as if East African art began when they arrived. Frankly speaking, almost every white person that comes here fancies himself ‘a pioneer’ in the fields of culture and the arts.

Unfortunately, we have even seen European cultural institutions destroy records of historic events that Paa ya Paa held jointly with those institutions, which is one more way of erasing our history. To me, it’s their attempt to wipe out our past, our history because once people lose a sense of their history, they are rootless and malleable … Unless you know your past—your point of reference, you don’t have a future … And what we need is more continuity.

Q: Why do you think this is possible?

EN: Unfortunately, people feel free to tell lies about our culture because historically, our cultural traditions were orally transmitted. They were not written down, so everyone that comes here feels they’re entitled to ‘make history’ according their concepts of time and space, not according to Africans’ actual experience… They keep wanting to ‘discover Africa’ and redefining a new ‘ground zero’

Q: How do you look at the present day art scene in Kenya specifically?

EN: Historically, there used to be annual art exhibitions for school sponsored by the Art Inspector for Schools (through the Ministry of Education). There was a commitment to cultivating creativity among Kenyan youth. But the Art Inspectorate died out because administrators got utilitarian and opportunistic.

Today, what we see are a lot of arts & crafts NGOs run by Europeans with Black people as their fronts ….We are also seeing the prophetic aspect being drained out of the arts, to be replaced with talk of Marketing…So what we are seeing now in the arts arena is all market orientation and prostitution of Art for money .For if you sell yourself for money, what are you but a prostitute.

Q: Where do you see the Kenyan cultural scene heading in the future?

EN: Currently, the arts scene is soulless. It’s just about colors and abstract images that have no credibility locally; it has no significance to Kenyans. Right now, what we see is so many rootless ‘free radicals’ who are floating without a sense of direction, depth or purpose. We see Western-educated Africans coming back here like a landslide or an avalanche, many just European proxies.

I can’t help but think of them as being like the Eucalyptus trees that the Europeans brought here. Those trees grow very fast, but they were foreign things; they had shallow roots and were easily uprooted.

True art grows from the soil and communicates with the people. So in the future, what we Africans need to do is rediscover our roots and then see how they relate to the contemporary social scene. What’s necessary is to see Art as a vehicle for the expression of cultural continuity. Artists need to communicate on their own terms, without apologies.

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