How one man makes a difference

One man can make a difference. And so can one woman. Such a woman was the former Dutch ambassador to Kenya, Laetitia van den Assum.

She believed passionately in the power of art to encourage good governance through a more aware and open society.

Her method was sponsorship. The local arts scene benefited hugely, and the lady is fondly remembered. And the man? Step forward Bart Ouvry, the ambassador of Belgium to Kenya.

M. Ouvry came here in May 2011 and immediately set about encouraging the arts. A keen collector, he ensured the walls of his embassy and official residence were hung with exemplary works from the Belgian national collection.

And he was the driving force behind a series of exhibitions held to celebrate King’s Day, the Belgian national holiday that takes places on November 15, and honours the country’s ruling dynasty.

Last year it was King Albert. He stepped down and now it is King Phillipe. That’s dynasties for you.

M. Ouvry’s exhibitions were curated by expat Belgian art experts, of whom there are a surprising number. Gallery owner Samantha Ripa de Meana handled the first, consultant curator Gonda Geets the second, last year, and now it is the turn of collector and furniture maker Marc van Rampelberg.

M. Ouvry’s exhibitions were staged in his official residence, the delightful pastiche of Versailles that sits on the edge of Muthaiga. He leaves us next August, so this will be his last show. It is interesting — and this ambassador will be badly missed.

Van Rampelberg has assembled 162 works by 12 artists — seven painters and five sculptors — to give us what he subtitles 50 years of art in Kenya. Elsewhere it is described, “a look at Kenya’s artistic past and present.”

LABYRINTH

The exhibition, called Labyrinth, is set mainly on a series of angled screens, under canvas on the large rear patio of the residence. You wander through the lanes between the screens allowing many of the works to take you by surprise as they come into view.

Big names are there, on pictures that have lain in private collections and remained unseen for years.

The show will remain in place for at least a couple of weeks and invitations have been sent out to schools so children can wander through the lanes of their own heritage.

Hopefully, they will be educated and inspired by some of the work on show. It is by the painters Jak Katarikawe, Sane Wadu, Kivuthi Mbuno (early ones, before he began putting little fantasy blackbirds on top of all his creatures), Peterson Kamwathi, Richard Kimathi, Fitsum Berhe and Patrick Mukabi.

The sculptors are Gakunju Kaigwa, the late Samwel Wanjau, Jackson Wanjau, Morris Foit and Chelenge van Rampelberg, who also contributes a painting and several large woodblocks.

The exhibition is accompanied by an excellent catalogue produced by the photographer James Muriuki. The need for catalogues is rapidly becoming a hobby horse of mine. Done properly, they are souvenirs that radiate knowledge and add to the region’s artistic development.

Works that live in the mind are four life-size studies of female nudes by Mukabi — energetic celebrations of flesh — plus four of his tin cut-outs of figures caught up in the post-election violence.

I still believe these little-seen wall sculptures to be seminal works that will be recognised as landmarks in the region’s artistic corpus.

The Kamwathis included an early politically pointed woodcut, The Piano Player, plus two large charcoals from his sheep series. Other highlights were several sculptures by Gakunju Kaigwa, including a wrenching wood carving of a shackled man.

RARELY SEEN EARLY PAINTINGS

Rarely seen early paintings by Jak Katarikawe and Sane Wadu abounded, and the many carvings by Morris Foit were a delight.

One of the strengths — and weaknesses — of this show is that it is essentially one man’s choice: the curator’s. A good curator, like a good editor, stamps his or her personality on the production.

They live or die by their choices.

Here, instead of covering the 50 years since Independence with work by Kenya’s most prominent artists, Van Rampelberg appears to have focused on works that he likes… which clearly includes the comprehensive offering of carvings and woodblocks by Chelenge van Rampelberg, his wife.

Their quality earns them a place (particularly the woodblocks), but there are some surprising omissions — sculptures by Maggie Otieno and Irene Wanjiru, for instance.

And where are paintings by Wanyu Brush, Ancent Soi and Cartoon Joseph? All three can lay claim to determining the course of Kenyan painting. It was in fact an exhibition remarkable as much for what was not there as for what was.

There were 101 pictures by seven painters, an average of 14 pictures each, and 61 sculptures by five sculptors, around 12 apiece.

An allocation of, say, four pieces by each artist for the same size show would have given us 25 painters instead of seven, and 15 sculptors instead of five.

It would have allowed space for such significant painters as Brush, Soi and Cartoon, as well as Chain Muhandi, Otieno Kota, Beatrice Wanjiku, Michael Soi, Ehoodi Kichape, Xavier Verhoest, Timothy Brooke and Mary Collis, plus talented newcomers like Shabu Mwangi, Paul Onditi, Gor Soudan, Zihan Kassam and Florence Wangui.

Sculptors Otieno, Wanjiru, Peter Walala and Harrison Mburu would also have enriched the display, along with many more.

This would have produced an exhibition of international importance that could easily have moved to the National Museum and represented the very best Kenya has offered over the past 50 years — a fitting celebration for this anniversary — presuming, of course, that the NMK curators are interested in showing important pieces by major artists.

For my sanity’s sake, I have to assume they are.

This story first appeared in The East African CLICK HERE to go to the story