Art has traditionally been a pastime of Nairobi, but Kisumu is beginning to make waves in a region not widely known for its prominence in the visual arts.
The city is now home to a growing number of talented artists, including Coaster Ojwang’, Jaramogi Bernard, Clive Odhiambo and Obama Wilson, all of whom showcase their works in Nairobi.
Just last week, Kisumu hosted one of the country’s largest exhibitions, featuring the works of 40 talented artists.
The exhibition ongoing at the Kisumu Museum is a curation by David Mito and Sino Santana, an up-and-budding curator reeling from the success of the “Prints” workshop at the House of Friends in Kibera.
The Kibera Arts District plays host to Mwangaza Art School in Kisumu in an attempt to teach, inspire and expose, and the Wan E Yo exhibition-translated as On Our Way, depicts the journey by the Kisumu artists based in Nairobi, back home to share with fellow artists in Kisumu- their experience and exposure.
The artworks range from Sh5,000 to Sh720,000. One of the most expensive artworks is by Peter Elungat, a master of the craft.
“The basis of the exhibition was to bring in students and young artists and to showcase their works, with the more established artists for them to be able to learn something. It is all about learning, finishing, framing and even how to price their paintings. A good artist gets to understand the importance of process and putting the work, before they get to charge a painting for Sh720,000, one has to learn the process,” says Santana.
From a curator’s point, the art scene in Kisumu has evolved. It was struggling because most of the good artists like Obama and Ojwang’ who are from Kisumu left because there wasn’t much appreciation of the visual arts in the city. Most of its inhabitants would not have bought a painting for Sh10,000.
“However nowadays, the market has made steady progress to the extent of people buying paintings for over Sh300,000. If more is done in terms of marketing, Kisumu is likely to become one of the biggest hubs of art in Kenya,” says Santana.
“People resonate with art here and there is a need to be more aggressive with the way we expose them more here.”
At the exhibition are works done by 40 artists with the most prominent names being Elungat, Ojwang- a graduate of Mwangaza Art School. On display are also the works of Rosetta Aweko from Uganda, Onyis Martin from Nairobi.
George Odongo also finds his works on display as does Willis Otieno from Kisumu, David Mito, just to name a few.
“The style for most of the work is modern contemporary art where the artists on display have displayed different techniques to stand out. Most of the artists in Kisumu use have no access to the highest quality fabrics and their style and texturing is affected by the materials used. The canvas is heavy which in turn plays out with the vibrancy of the colors and the flow. The art is unique,” says Santana.
“For this exhibition, we asked the artists to minimise the use of fish and boat because it is usually the preferred transitive style of most of the artists from the region. In turn, this enabled us to have a synchrony of artists mentality and we ended up showcasing over 120 works that had artistic individuality behind them.”
Sometimes the space is limiting for artists in Kisumu in terms of client expectations. The artists find it hard to paint outside of the box because they would also love to sell and you can only sell what people prefer.
For this exhibition however, it was pleasant to see the artists move out of their comfort boxes and if the crowd reaction is anything to go by, we are likely witnessing a rising hub for visual art.
