By its very nature and context, public art coalesces with the public sphere; at first new and foreign yet soon absorbed to become part of its history and collective memory. The STRA public art installation project held in Kibera Nairobi, Spring 2011, in addition became a conduit for a different kind of coalescence. A collaboration between two artists who through some serendipitous happenstance struck a fluid and mutual conversation that resulted in the making of a poetic installation, STRA. We first introduced their project in the article, STRA| Stories for One Another, an exclusive in-depth interview with both creators, Japanese artist Megumi Matsubara and Kenyan artist Kota Otieno discussing the nature and details of their project. We take one step closer here, to reveal their thoughts through a candid conversation on their individual practices and methodologies, which converge and diverge yet still continues to mark both artists.
Kota, what were your thoughts about making art installations and public art in Kibera? Is it common to have art there?
OK After moving to Nairobi, together with a friend, we created the artist-duo Masaai Mbili in Kibera. It was some years back, before I became a solo artist. We worked as signage painters and had our sign kiosk before the art studio. It was a small kiosk but really famous in a way.
We couldn’t find any white walls anywhere, or even any plain ones but we found this bridge that looked really empty. When we didn’t have any signage work, we’d go to this bridge and start painting. The local chief, councilors and other people came and asked if we had permission. We’d say that we did but in fact we didn’t. We just continued and continued until they got used to it. In a way they also liked what we were doing. We also once made a 12 meter high sculpture but the city council came and carried it away. They thought we were self-advertising so it only lasted for 8 months.
Megumi, your collaboration with Kota, the Kibera public art installation STRA had a political aspect to it, can you parallel this to your experience of public art installations that you have made in Japan?
MM I would say any kind of intervention or artistic action that you insist could be political. It’s not like I did this billboard installation in Nairobi because it was political. It’s about listening to my intuition and following my instinct.
Even just hanging a thin textile on a street in Tokyo needed a lot of negotiations and permissions which I didn’t expect. In the end there were four guards holding that piece of cloth. For me that is political. It’s probably not pleasant for your piece but it’s part of the effect, dialogue that your work creates. I’m always interested in that part. Not just the nice clean beautiful thing as a final piece. It’s not like I can choose between being political or non-political. I think I can’t. When I throw a stone in a pond, it makes ripples. I can’t throw a stone without making any impact. It’s the decision to throw a stone that creates the political impact. Art begins with this decision.
What has been the ripple effect that you have experienced through your collaboration?
OK It has really inspired the piece that I am working on right now. I think more in an installation way than just creating beautiful pieces to hang on a wall. I used to do installations once in a while but I didn’t respect them fully as art. I made them when I was bored and called them installations. When I came to this garden, my current studio, I really started making more installations. I still make pieces to sell to earn my living which allows me to move on; I have to sell a bit. But when I met Megumi, I really started to see installation in a different way. She inspired me. Immediately after she left, I really got the courage to work on this fabric piece that I had just let sit around one month before. Now I have to complete it. It’s around 14 meters long. I tie it to trees. I’ve only done several meters, I need to cover all of it. Maybe in the next three months, it will be finished.
Recently there was a party at our studio, there were around 200 bottles. I just felt that they will make my art. I kept them in the studio, I don’t know what I want to do with them just yet. And I have a piece that has been laying in the garden for one month, with my shirt and long clothes. There are also some pieces of wood, something not finished but that is the piece that led a German artist to do a collaboration with me. All my pieces since we met are just starting to go public. I am not sure if I’ve got it right, but I think I am there.
MM As for me, although I make installations, I always focus on the immaterial side of things, something that is not physical. But by seeing Kota’s work and the way he works, I must admit I got brought back to the power of materials. Coincidentally, we both use fabric but very differently. Kota was weaving. Ripping old pieces of fabric, weaving and stitching them together, eventually they’d become big again. Each part of the fabric bore a story and he wove them together.
I on the other hand was using a huge piece of fabric, huge but extremely light, almost non-existent, so it could move in the wind. In a way I was not focusing on the fabric itself but on its movement. I play a lot with transparency and things like that. He was using things in an almost opposite way but still as transparent as they both could be. I was attracted by the weight of things that Kota was creating. It really attracted me that things could be the same but so different. I think I have started to see materials in a different way.
OK I need to change the way Megumi works. (laugh) She works very formally. My materials are really informal. I don’t like to choose which material to work with and I really avoid buying materials. I just hunt for them in large quantities. The more I see them as each day passes, the more ideas come to me. When I start working with it, I make sure it is taken care of. I use very useless materials, but when you see my finished pieces you wouldn’t imagine that they came from junk. The finished pieces are more formal, but when I start working, it is informal. I am sure that Megumi saw that art can be made from informal materials (laugh). What do you say about it Megumi?
MM I like that you give things time, which I do too. But you give time to objects, while I give time to situations. You communicate a lot with materials. I communicate a lot with situations and events. Then I kind of visualise it through materials. But in your way, it’s really more direct, the communication between you and the materials. Together with that context where you pick the materials, that really made sense to me. I on the other hand do care about them, but it’s not like I am obsessed with objects or things. The way you work with the materials, leaving them some time and letting them go where they want to be, it was almost like me letting people do what they want to do through the project that I would put in the middle. I would let things open and you would let objects open. The way you use time was similar.
OK Time. Yes. Materials, it also depends on the environment where you live. That makes the difference. For me, if I need to get materials, if I don’t get them on the way, I would go to the junkyard. I rarely go to hardware shops. Even a sheet of metal, if I go buy it from the hardware shop, I really feel bad. You know, a new sheet of metal, it’s got no feelings. (laugh) You have to force it. If you get an old one, you automatically see some stories in it. I don’t prefer new materials.
MM Maybe it’s not about materials but really about time. You wait until you encounter something that feels right to be in such position. It’s more about finding and relocating things in the right place, until it becomes art. In that way, we share the way we use time. But I’m inspired by the fact that you use actual physical materials or objects to relocate things.
Your thoughtful exchange and tinges of banter helps us to discover some of the layers such as the formal critical thinking layers to your collaboration and individual practices. During the time of the project, there was also an environmental influence, the Tohoku Earthquake. How did it influence you, Megumi?
MM It influenced me to develop my piece. I wanted to celebrate very normal things. I didn’t want to make any big statement. In Kibera, on the eye-level, there are many things hanging and very dense. I thought they would look beautiful if they were up there on the billboard. It was a simple desire. I thought they should be celebrated. Aside from that, everyone was asking me if I was ok and my family. I saw a painting in Kibera just two days after. I felt a lot of empathy from Kenyans by just being there. I also coincidentally found a beautiful poem written by an African poet that I incorporated into another STRA; silent newspaper piece. Such things both calmed and encouraged me to continue the projects.
For STRA #2, another public intervention in Nairobi using newspaper, Megumi produced seven issues of her own silent newspapers, that she photocopied and sold.
The hand-drawn banners rearranged the familiar face of the newsstand. The original news in the newspapers were erased and replaced by her visual diary of Nairobi.
Megumi you wrote a review in 2006 about the travelling exhibition, Africa Remix commenting that you were looking forward to the next step in the representation of contemporary African art, beyond exoticism and romanticism, the point where it would begin to coexist amongst different things. What are your reflections now post making a project such as you had wished to see?
MM I’m not surprised that I’ve said something like that five years ago, although back then I didn’t know that I would be in Africa collaborating with an African artist in my life. But things work in sequence.
It’s fascinating that you are doing what you wrote about five years ago. Another Africa should be like that too, to open up the continent, create dialogue and speak about in specificity. That’s where the future is. Any parting comments Kota?
OK My blood is red. That’s what I know. Actually, it’s not red, it’s art in color.
MM Asante sana [Thank you]
OK Asanteni sana nyinyi wote [Thank you all]
MM Asante
OK Asante sana
MM Asante sana
About
Megumi Matsubara is a Japanese artist whose practice spans from static architecture to ephemeral situations including installation, sculpture, performance, music and writings. She is a founding member of assistant since 2002.
Otieno Kota is a Kenyan artist based in Nairobi. His works include mixed-media paintings, sculptures and installations. In 2001, he co-founded Maasai Mbili, a Kibera collective and community arts group. Since 2006, having left the collective, Kota’s solo practice explores the potential of discarded materials that when woven create synthesised narratives. In his work, beauty and poetry emerge from the most unexpected places where the multitudes of lived moments accumulate.
Photography by Joe Lukhovi, Sylvia N. Gichia, Kenshu Shintsubo, Yoshinari Nishio, Megumi Matsubara
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