Winter Memories
Coming from a successful year, Shabu Mwangi feels he has more to fight for than celebrate. His work has travelled from the Mukuru community in Lunga-Lunga, Kenya to Germany and Brazil but Shabu is ready to deal with the uncomfortable here. Back in his studio, in painting after painting he gives voice to social injustices, by looking at pain, stolen identities and lack of freedom.
Shabu’s work while rooted in the global is often deeply personal. Winter Memories is a collection of innerscapes in which winter acts as a metaphor of our collective memories and how they shape our worlds.
From 2014 until now Shabu´s figurative paintings have evolved into raw and unsettling imagery with violently distorted subjects. Isolated souls imprisoned and tormented by existential dilemmas. Shabu´s canvases communicate powerful emotions. He has grown and evolved, and it is more clear to him what he stands for in his path as an artist, he understands his voice, he knows his place and he knows what to do. He believes that artists have a responsibility to empower others who are not in a position to use their voices. “I paint for people to be triggered and to spark a conversation, I paint to liberate, I am not painting for beauty, I am painting to start”
“We are facing as (a continent) policies from colonized times, this is a modern way of slavery.” Through artworks like The Surrogates or Motion in Misinformation, Shabu questions the system and injustice from the colonial era. “We are no longer a community. The Maasai don´t longer have access to their lands... I don’t think it's time to talk about happiness, there are still colonial elements in my country. Structures that are designed to keep people in torture.” State of Agony expresses this collective pain.
In Freedom in Illusion, Shabu questions our freedom. “We live in a fake society where our identity has been stolen. There is no freedom without a real identity.” He calls for keeping our voice alive, fighting for our traditions, values, culture and challenging ourselves about society.
Earlier this year, at the Documenta exhibition in Kassel, Shabu felt his frustrations went beyond his country. In different interviews while there, the questions he was asked were only about his community and constrained him from talking about global perspectives which he felt dismissed his voice. “We speak with the knowledge (of global affairs) but they don’t listen to us. Don't put me in a cage I can speak from other places”. Supreme Cages is an expression of that angst.
The painting Winter Memories gives us an insight into how memories are subjective to our own experiences. There are good and bad recollections in every memory, winter can be good for some or terrible for others depending on the location. This could refer to the coming winter and the power struggles we are seeing in Europe or Ukraine.
The artwork Flags that Bleed addresses how flags come from wars and blood, and even now flags bleed as fighting perpetuates across the globe.
“Why do people move?” He asks rhetorically, talking about migration.
“Because we are humans, we are not limited by one place; when a country is being exploited, people will need to look for a better place. The problem is also capitalism, the eurocentric mentality, these are big problems, if we want to be a community we should embrace diversity, rather than have one central way of being and acting, but no one is doing it.”
In this exhibition, consistent with his vision, Shabu stands for a change. A change in policies that undermine freedom. In the institutions of society, Shabu sees the cages that are binding the progression, the evolution, of man. And he wants to shake it. He is not concentrating on the post-colonial struggles but on the contemporary fights that the next generation is facing. As a leader in his community and organisation, Shabu is expressing his concerns in the best way he knows, with his brush.
Shabu Mwangi was born in 1985 and began practising art in 2003. He lives and works in Mukuru, where he established the Wajukuu Art Project in 2013 with a deep conviction that his work could highlight the lives of the disadvantaged minorities in his community. Deeply concerned by society’s inequality and our lack of empathy for people with different social, political, ethnic and religious beliefs, his work seeks to examine human behaviour and our collective amnesia. His inspiration comes from the view that inequities and frustration deeply affect the greater society as well as the belief that actions taken during this highly sensitive political time can give individuals insight into their own identity; how they are influenced politically and how they are divided culturally and socially.
A self-taught artist, Mwangi has taken part in workshops and residency programs both locally and internationally. In 2013, he set up the Wajukuu Art Project, a community-based arts organization to support and train young artists in Mukuru, Nairobi. In 2017, he completed an artist residency at S27 Kunst und Bildung, Berlin.
He has worked with art2be and Hope Worldwide and exhibitions include Pop-Up Africa (GAFRA, London 2014), Out of the Slum, (Germany 2012), A Never Ending Longing, (Cromwell Place, London 2022) and various group and solo exhibitions in Nairobi, Kenya.
After decades of hard work, Shabu Mwangi and his collective Wanjukuu Arts won the Mario Bocchi Award and, the Arnold Bode Prize, at his exhibition in documenta15 in Germany and he participated in Biennale Mercosul 13 in Brazil all within the span of a few months in 2022. his work has been in prestigious exhibitions such as 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London (2018), NADA Art Fair New York City (2018) and Art Transposition, LKB/G, Hamburg (2017).
Shabu’s work while rooted in the global is often deeply personal. Winter Memories is a collection of innerscapes in which winter acts as a metaphor of our collective memories and how they shape our worlds.
From 2014 until now Shabu´s figurative paintings have evolved into raw and unsettling imagery with violently distorted subjects. Isolated souls imprisoned and tormented by existential dilemmas. Shabu´s canvases communicate powerful emotions. He has grown and evolved, and it is more clear to him what he stands for in his path as an artist, he understands his voice, he knows his place and he knows what to do. He believes that artists have a responsibility to empower others who are not in a position to use their voices. “I paint for people to be triggered and to spark a conversation, I paint to liberate, I am not painting for beauty, I am painting to start”
“We are facing as (a continent) policies from colonized times, this is a modern way of slavery.” Through artworks like The Surrogates or Motion in Misinformation, Shabu questions the system and injustice from the colonial era. “We are no longer a community. The Maasai don´t longer have access to their lands... I don’t think it's time to talk about happiness, there are still colonial elements in my country. Structures that are designed to keep people in torture.” State of Agony expresses this collective pain.
In Freedom in Illusion, Shabu questions our freedom. “We live in a fake society where our identity has been stolen. There is no freedom without a real identity.” He calls for keeping our voice alive, fighting for our traditions, values, culture and challenging ourselves about society.
Earlier this year, at the Documenta exhibition in Kassel, Shabu felt his frustrations went beyond his country. In different interviews while there, the questions he was asked were only about his community and constrained him from talking about global perspectives which he felt dismissed his voice. “We speak with the knowledge (of global affairs) but they don’t listen to us. Don't put me in a cage I can speak from other places”. Supreme Cages is an expression of that angst.
The painting Winter Memories gives us an insight into how memories are subjective to our own experiences. There are good and bad recollections in every memory, winter can be good for some or terrible for others depending on the location. This could refer to the coming winter and the power struggles we are seeing in Europe or Ukraine.
The artwork Flags that Bleed addresses how flags come from wars and blood, and even now flags bleed as fighting perpetuates across the globe.
“Why do people move?” He asks rhetorically, talking about migration.
“Because we are humans, we are not limited by one place; when a country is being exploited, people will need to look for a better place. The problem is also capitalism, the eurocentric mentality, these are big problems, if we want to be a community we should embrace diversity, rather than have one central way of being and acting, but no one is doing it.”
In this exhibition, consistent with his vision, Shabu stands for a change. A change in policies that undermine freedom. In the institutions of society, Shabu sees the cages that are binding the progression, the evolution, of man. And he wants to shake it. He is not concentrating on the post-colonial struggles but on the contemporary fights that the next generation is facing. As a leader in his community and organisation, Shabu is expressing his concerns in the best way he knows, with his brush.
Shabu Mwangi was born in 1985 and began practising art in 2003. He lives and works in Mukuru, where he established the Wajukuu Art Project in 2013 with a deep conviction that his work could highlight the lives of the disadvantaged minorities in his community. Deeply concerned by society’s inequality and our lack of empathy for people with different social, political, ethnic and religious beliefs, his work seeks to examine human behaviour and our collective amnesia. His inspiration comes from the view that inequities and frustration deeply affect the greater society as well as the belief that actions taken during this highly sensitive political time can give individuals insight into their own identity; how they are influenced politically and how they are divided culturally and socially.
A self-taught artist, Mwangi has taken part in workshops and residency programs both locally and internationally. In 2013, he set up the Wajukuu Art Project, a community-based arts organization to support and train young artists in Mukuru, Nairobi. In 2017, he completed an artist residency at S27 Kunst und Bildung, Berlin.
He has worked with art2be and Hope Worldwide and exhibitions include Pop-Up Africa (GAFRA, London 2014), Out of the Slum, (Germany 2012), A Never Ending Longing, (Cromwell Place, London 2022) and various group and solo exhibitions in Nairobi, Kenya.
After decades of hard work, Shabu Mwangi and his collective Wanjukuu Arts won the Mario Bocchi Award and, the Arnold Bode Prize, at his exhibition in documenta15 in Germany and he participated in Biennale Mercosul 13 in Brazil all within the span of a few months in 2022. his work has been in prestigious exhibitions such as 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London (2018), NADA Art Fair New York City (2018) and Art Transposition, LKB/G, Hamburg (2017).
