The following is a release from the Trust for Indigenous Culture and Health (TICAH)
During these uncertain times, we all need some good news, some light, some reassurances. Artists are those individuals in our communities who hold tremendous power to help us see what we are trying to ignore and to hold us accountable, but also to remind us of our joys and the deep and wonderful connections we have to nature and to one another.
The global pandemic has scared us and changed us, but it has also brought us together in a way that we have never seen before. Over the next two weeks, artists around Nairobi will be creating a piece to help us see just this, that we are together even though we are apart and that we are resilient.
To quote Arthur Golden “Adversity is like a strong wind. I don’t mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be”.
With studios closed, galleries closed, museums closed, schools closed, the very livelihood of a visual artist has been closed too. There has been a rallying call for artists to get up and create rather than to ruminate on the state of the world and all that is worrying. The Internet has seen several online challenges for artists to participate in to keep them creative and working.
TICAH’s own Lockdown Challenge is just one of the many where artists have shared their work, their voices, their views, their thoughts and emotions with
the world. The Lockdown Challenge has seen over sixty-seven artists participating so far. We have also had more than three hundred works of art shared. These pieces have filled our social media feeds with beauty in the midst of emotional distress and pain going on in the world.
With the Lockdown Challenge continuing, artists were eager to take this activism to the next level with an installation to be completed by over forty artists. The aim is to celebrate our creativity and the beauty of art but also to inspire and bring hope and a sense of Kenyan resilience.
The “Resilience is Everywhere” installation supported 46 artists to work concurrently on their pieces over the course of a week. They were in isolation but together in their arts practices. Videos and photos of the work coming together were shared on social media through TICAH’s DreamKona Facebook and Instagram accounts to bring others into the creation of the work.
At the end of the week, each piece was sent, by rider, to the DreamKona space in Uhuru Gardens where a curatorial team (also being careful to maintain social distance) connected the pieces into one installation. The final work was then online and went on tour around Nairobi for everyone to enjoy and to connect with. So far we have been hosted at Archives in the CBD, Lunga Lunga, Waterfront, The Hub, TRM, and Galleria.
The installation has become more than a beautiful piece of art – it is now a mobile stage for performances of all kinds, a background for mobile art studios, classes and exhibitions.
Resilienceiseverywhere #Kenyanresilience #Resilientart
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