For the next running month, the Contemporary One Off Contemporary Art Gallery will be showcasing the works of Elias Mung’ora, a soft-spoken mixed media artist whose incoming exhibition The Descendants is a trek into the historical past of Scottish Missionaries in Kenya.
It is brilliantly evocative, poignant, nostalgic and raises more questions than answers which plays right into the style of the artist. It is an in-depth look at how the past influences the present and weaved beautifully through text, image and a brushstroke.
Elias grew up as an active member of the church, with his parents still currently holding that mantle in the local Presbyterian Church. He, however took a break after college but has still remained fascinated by its history, from its relation with his community dating back to the colonial and precolonial era.
His interest was piqued by the work done by missionaries with a specific preference on the Scottish missionaries in his background.
“The funny bit about the person who founded the British East Africa Company, which was the initial colonising company, was that he was a Scotsman,” he says, “he was also a serious Christian who sent out a company on one hand and on the other hand he sent out a Christian mission.”
The Scottish mission which first landed in Kibwezi, Makueni, went to Thogoto in Kikuyu and then set up a couple of other missions, one of which was in Tumutumu, Nyeri, which is the backyard and the inspiration for the current exhibition as it is where he hails from.
“An ancestor down my family line sold land to the missionaries through barter trade and his five sons went to school and became part of the clergy. My family line thus grew up under the influence of the Scottish Mission before it became a Presbyterian Church,” he notes.
The Descendants is inspired by his curiosity on the change from culture, a legacy carried forward by colonialism. He finds the missionaries interesting because of how they were able to affect people's daily lives.
A Sceptic is born Acrylic and image transfer on canvas artwork by Elias Mungora pictured on April 23, 2025 at the One-off Art Gallery in Nairobi.
Photo credit: Billy Ogada | Nation Media Group
“As a Kikuyu, our language was committed to writing by the missionaries, they came up with the alphabet and first handwriting. If you look up for the word for chair you will find that it was introduced at that time, people used to sit on stools and call them different things,” he says, “They introduced different ideas of doing things like cooking, hygiene, religion, it was a complete shift.”
Does he look at it in a positive or negative way? “It is a complex thing, the reason I am looking at it as a descendant is that my worldview has completely changed. If I came here 100 years ago and looked at my ancestors, the way we would see the world would be polar opposite,” he rues.
One of his paintings depicts a quote from an elder who was admonishing the missionaries for refusing to listen to them because they had pierced their ears and instead, went for their children who hadn’t done so. He predicted they (children) would become as English as them (missionaries).
“Those people are us,” Elias acknowledges of this fulfilled prophecy. “We speak their language, we express their ideas, our way of looking at the world is completely global.”
The Descendants' aim is to interrogate who these new people have become and the kind of conversations they would have with their forefathers. It is a mixed media juxtaposition of the role the missionaries played in redefining the Kikuyu culture.
The Kirk Season Acrylic and image transfer on canvas artwork by Elias Mungora pictured on April 23, 2025 at the One-off Art Gallery in Nairobi.
Photo credit: Billy Ogada | Nation Media Group
“We live in a country where being able to speak in English accords you a level of status and this is something that Ngugi wa Thiong’o spoke about a lot 50 years ago; how English was valued so much so that they would get punished for speaking their mother tongue.
His materials hold a symbolic meaning, the images engrained on the canvas are pulled from Tumutumu during the colonial period. A visit at the gallery seems like a walk back into an age when culture and context were being redefined. The texts are directly pulled from the archives. In a sense, he is a living historical cartographer that manipulates canvas to articulate the journey of time.
Text and images carry the same significance with this exhibition. They tell the story of a painters past heritage while mirroring our current status and for some funny reason, there are no conclusive answers to the questions asked. It is almost as if the artist wants the viewer to ask and answer the questions for themselves.
Layers and shadows take a center stage in his paintings. Media are fused with a seamless ruggedness. The style is suggestive because the painter enjoys incidental work, he wants you to put yourself in his shoes.
“The risk I feel as an artist is sometimes you never want to get too comfortable in a situation because you become too used the same way of producing and you lose the essence of the work.”
