Draft – not for quotation or citation

The Flashless Spirit:Kenyan Art and Design in the Fusion Period

ByDonna Pido PhD

Presentation at the 15th Triennial Symposium on African ArtLos AngelesMarch, 2011

Copyright Donna K Pido

Keeping, Adopting, Reworking

Cartoonists bring tradition into their work

• The designer fused three very basic East African forms, the trapezoid, the spiral and the disc in a piece of high fashion jewelry.

Kenya• African women now wear very elegant saris for festive occasions. It’s not just about chapatis and masala anymore!

After Annie Hall made the kyondo part of American culture, Kamba women made so many that they could play with new designs and colors. They incorporated traditional Kamba beadwork patterns as well as Fair Isle and Scandinavian Knitting

patterns . Now they wear western and West African clothing and carry their embellished baskets in the traditional way

• For his wedding, Immanuel Imana fused Turkana tradition with a Polish bedspread and his university graduation tassel.

• White face paint is correct for occasions of spiritual importance and transition

Mismatches, Misinterpretations, Misunderstandings

• White makeup on a cover model was seen as inappropriate by many Kenyan women who felt that the editor was out of touch with their culture.

• Water spirits are always problematic. The concept of refreshing personal banking was severely damaged by the depiction of spring water in the form of a woman.

• The National Bank hosted an international conference of national banking associations in Nairobi. This full page ad in the local papers personified the Kenyan banking industry as a 7 year old child welcoming guests to its home. Kenyans often personify their country as a child when they don’t want to take responsibility for something.

• Anthony Likhalakha is a well known soccer player. The ad agency and client wanted to show how strong a condom is, assuming that Kenyan men would welcome a barrier to their spiritual flow. Many people were left wondering if there is something VERRRY unusual about Anthony Likhalakha.

The editors of Spice, a popular Ugandan magazine, put a ‘cheesecake’ image on the cover of each issue. The images are not retouched.

This young woman appears in her underwear one piece of which is ill fitting.

This image, in a children’s magazine distributed in the Sunday newspapers, depicts boys preparing for their circumcision . They should be naked, having just come from the river early in the morning, but because of East Africans’ reluctance to depict complete nudity, each boy has been given a diaper on the understanding that this is a convention indicating nudity.

• This image is promoting the good taste of a beef flavored food additive. Instead of putting a diaper or shorts on the bull, the advertiser left him with a lump - which is what you’ll have if you eat OYO.

In 2004 Unilever sponsored a

National Dress project with

support from the government. The outfit was

intended to be a fusion of many

indigenous cultures with western dress.

After the fashion show, nobody wore

it except the National women’s Volleyball team,

once.

Color Symbolism

In connection with God, blue represents good health good fortune, safety and assurance of

safe passage through portals or dicey situations

Red symbolizes danger, illness, bad fortune. The text of this poster in Ekegusii, tells the viewer that both the husband and wife can transmit AIDS yet the image puts heavy weight on the

wife.

Kenyan male cartoonists regularly depict the woman as the dangerous or diseased (dots or flowers on a ground) partner in

contradiction of written texts.

This is supposed to be a booklet about domestic violence yet it is pictorially unclear who is hitting whom. The woman’s red wrapper tells us subliminally that she is in the wrong.

Here are but two examples of efforts

to correct that imbalance

• Maurice Cardinal Otunga burned these two AIDS related pamphlets at a

public rally on• August 31, 1995.

This slide is included solely for the shameless self promotion of

Donna Pido

Social Hierarchy

The use of blue is good but naming a cleaning product BOY is inappropriate in East Africa.

BIDCO, a local manufacturer felt comfortable doing so.

• Kenyans express social ranking in many ways while emphasizing that African is always best

• Here, status is indicated by the type of seating – high backed rolling office chair, casual chair and traditional stool with the African stool at the lowest level

• The rural woman carrying the traditional bag by a strap on her forehead is portrayed in diminished status by comparison with the urban, high heeled woman.

• The bank’s customer base is heavily rural.

The Kenya Anti Corruption Commission, portrayed as a Maasai warrior is supposed to

stand up for the little people.

The Maasai on the right stands for traditional culture while the Kikuyu couple

stands for contemporary chaos

Fusion and the Maa speakers

• Roy Sieber collected the bowtie on the left in the late 1950s. It was a gimmick then but is now fully a part of Maasai and Samburu culture.

• After the church wedding , the bride, dressed in West African attire, balked at the gate of her new husband’s boma until relatives promised her the right number of animals. Now, satisfied, she enters with her maid of honor, groom, best man and bridesmaids

Oral Tradition Fuses with the Printed Word in Maasailand – with blessings from the Firestick

Elders

• Maasai are ranked at both the top and the bottom of the social ladder depending on the situation. Cell phone use by a Maasai is seen as a fusion of African tradition with ‘modern’ technology

Everybody knows that animals bring a higher return than money in the bank. The ad agency is trying to convince customers that the bank gives a high a return as livestock to attract depositors.

• “Beauty and the Noble Savage?”

• Success is posing with a strangely dressed foreign woman, preferably a blonde, and getting money for it.

• Oldoinyo Baaba (The Mountain Father in Maa) is a Texan who presents himself as a Maasai whose parents migrated there in the 1930s. He grew up retaining his original culture. When he visited Kenya in the 1990s, Maasai people ran away in horror when they saw him. He is a gentle soul who may not know that he is wearing ornaments that are not culturally correct in any of the several cultures from which he has drawn them. In this image, he has omitted his lower lip plate but he can be seen wearing it in several videotapes on the web.

Architecture and Interiors

• Making it African is making it different from European.

• Innovative architects of the 70s reversed the pitch of the roof. The center of the house is at the base of the V. That way, when it rains, you get a shower in your stairwell

Typical ‘Kikuyu’ design, tiny spaces arranged for maximum inconvenience

Cape Dutch fuses with glass and steel

• You can ventilate your cow dung house with a register of parallel sticks. That way both wind AND snakes can come straight inside.

Smoke Evacuation means the donor will be proud of you - but - your cow

dung house will not be fumigated and you will have more bugs to deal with

‘modern

• The sumptuous staircase leads from the carport to the entrance. The pillars supporting the carport roof fuse neo-classical style with Coach House and Cecil B DeMIlle’’s Samson and Delilah. (Kampala)

• So what if there’s a support pillar in the middle of your dais. Just make it look like a tree

If you have a real tree – 100 year old Eucalyptus - first you create a lovely flower garden with benches arranged in

its shade. Then you chop down the tree, pour concrete around the stump

and sections of the trunk , varnish them and call it sculpture.

School of the Built Environment, School of the Arts

and Design, University of Nairobi

Obama Fusion, Kisumu, January 20, 2008

He is Inside the White House. Pay and Go In!

You can wrap up in our son

• One Luo in the White House

• All Luos in the White House

• Showing Love and Respect

• He’s EVERYBODY’S President

Foreign women flocked to Kisumu and

Kogelo looking for

male relatives of Obama – for

Genetic Fusion.

No Lie! (DP: PO)

Thanks for watching

Donna Pido, Ph D