The Nest Collective
is an interdisciplinary artist collective from Nairobi. Founded in 2012, the group works in the media of film, music, fashion, visual art, and literature. Their films include the queer anthology “Stories of Our Lives”, which has screened in over 80 countries and won numerous awards. They also founded HEVA, a fund to support East African creative entrepreneurs the first of its kind.
Twelve black-and-white photographic portraits of the artists. Some look serious, others smile, one looks sideways into the distance, one has closed eyes, and in one portrait you can’t make out a face behind the chain veil; moreover, this person is wearing three seat cushions and a bone-like pile of wood on his head.
With their holistic practice based on applied research, The Nest Collective produce films, fashion, literature, and works in other media. Their interventions engage audiences through multiple approaches, encouraging nuanced discussion and engagement with the issues raised, thereby developing aesthetic and artistic value. Their work finds diverse platforms, spaces, and audiences, including academics, cultural practitioners, civil society actors, and young people in the city.
The Nest Collective is particularly interested in contemporary urban experiences in African countries. For the group, they are the starting point for an engagement with their own history and thinking about possible futures. Although the group often responds to global contexts and entanglements, it is primarily aimed at Kenyan young men and women. Nevertheless, The Nest Collective is happy to see its work appeal to other audiences.
One of the members is fashion theorist and producer Sunny Dolat. “Design from Africa has always had a certain moment for a long time, a window of opportunity that usually doesn’t last more than a few months before the wheel moves on and the continent has to wait another five to eight years to be considered hip again,” he says.
“These moments are always bittersweet for me, because part of me is genuinely happy for the people who are able to benefit from the opportunities at this time. But I’m also aware of the fleeting nature of these moments, which will undoubtedly pass, and we’ll have to wait another few years before we’re ‘hot’ again. I hope that with all the conversations that have taken place over the years, the Global North has learned not to reduce the culture and aesthetics of a continent to a ‘moment,’ but instead to find ways to ensure that Africa and African creatives are valued in a lasting way.”
During documenta fifteen in Kassel
the collective denounces the negative consequences of Kenya’s urbanisation with the help of an imposing multimedia installation.
Return to Sender mimics a dystopian garbage landscape. The installation made of old clothes resembles a garbage dump in front of the orangery.
Return to Sender - Delivery Details (2022) is a companion piece that explores the context of the garbage mountain, which can only be seen in Kassel’s public space for 100 days, but is a never-ending reality in Kenya and many other African countries.
The video, shown inside the installation, looks at this difficult scenario from the point of view of different participants.
INVITED ACTORS
J.P. Waithera, Jim Chuchu, Njeri Gitungo, Njoki Ngumi, Noel Kasyoka, Sunny Dolat
Website
https://www.thisisthenest.com/
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ch33ZpUoiaO/
Youtube, vimeo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy4LB1nYIHs&t=29
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/storiesofourlives
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Britto Arts Trust
Britto Arts Trust is a non-profit artists’ collective founded in 2002, working out of Dhaka in various locations around the country. As part of the Triangle Network, an international network of artists and organisations, the collective has a global reach.
Britto’s artistic practice is dedicated to the socio-political upheaval in Bangladesh. In search of lost histories, cultures and communities, the collective explores and collects diverse sources in collaboration with various partners.
RASA
Local Bazaar and Supershop
Ceramics, metal, fabric, cotton and natural spices and seeds.
The Bengali word Rasa stands for food in general. It can be either food that can be eaten, or knowledge and ideas as spiritual food for any form of creativity. The original lifestyle and natural resources are often ignored.
We are part of a global commercial market. In our competitive market, brands attract the attention of customers. Dressing up food, giving each product an ideal shape, size or color, has become a crucial element of our food culture. We belong to a world where hybrid seeds, artificial fertilisers and chemical or pesticide methods are used in growing vegetables, fruits and crops in Bangladesh. Only recently a shift in thinking has begun, and people are turning their attention to organic agriculture.
As part of working within a larger ecosystem, artists from different parts of Bangladesh organised a series of local workshops. The artists created the final products in a ceramic workshop, where they worked for several months with the support of a team of assistants and experts. In addition to ceramic objects, there were also created embroidered objects and items made of metal at various locations.
The small objects appear not only as food, but also contain various statements about the food policy determined by the agricultural giants from powerful nations. The potential damage to our health, the environment and traditional agriculture, as well as many other damages, can be attributed to the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that are added to food. The excessive use of DDT and other pesticides poses a huge threat to humans and other species. Genetically modified seeds are displacing organic seeds and we are having difficulty growing plants, vegetables and fruits and identifying which seeds we have in front of us. Whether it is conventionally bred, genetically modified, or left in its original form.
Britto-Arts-Trust
The Wajukuu Art Project
is a community organization from Lunga-Lunga, part of Kenya’s Mukuru slum.
A group of artists* initiated the project in 2004 with a common goal of making Mukuru a place where children can freely express themselves and jobs are created through the production and sale of quality art.
The Mukuru slum is located on a hillside below the factories of Nairobi’s industrial area. A nearby landfill attracts youth from the slum. Finding little work in the factories that litter their neighborhood, combing the trash for saleable items is their only livelihood. Poverty drives many into crime and drug dealing. Violence and sexual abuse are pervasive, endangering the health and often the lives of their young victims. Created against this backdrop, the Wajukuu Art Project tells of resilience and the human ability to transform suffering into beauty.
Art forms the backbone of Wajukuu. It is understood not only as a practice, but as a way of life. Through art education, Wajukuu empowers children and youth to overcome everyday challenges and stand up against injustice they have experienced. A public library, Mukuru’s first, provides a safe space for students and adults to learn. Film screenings and murals address diverse topics, including conflict resolution, crime prevention, cultural practice, equality, health, teen pregnancy, and responsible behavior. In this way, Wajukuu creates a platform that allows the community to have a say about things that affect them.
Wajukuu’s architectural installation in documenta Halle
simulates a tunnel. It is inspired by the Manyatta, the traditional settlements of the Maasai, and by the informal aesthetics of the slums. Visitors can enter the tunnel and wander through the dark space. There, multimedia projects by artists associated with Wajukuu await them. In addition to a documentary film, Wajukuu presents objects such as an imposing readymade sculpture of a pedal-powered knife grinder.
The collective’s contribution to lumbung culminates in the sustainability project Killing Fear of the Unknown: Wajukuu Art Project creates a permanent project space here, supports its members financially, and imparts knowledge and skills to young participants in wood workshops.
Wajukuu Art Projects Website
https://wajukuuarts.wordpress.com/
https://instagram.com/wajukuuarts?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
INVITED ACTORS
Alexis Teyie, Arts Taste Curiocity (at&c Nairobi), Becki Waweru, Blackink Films, Charles Muthumbi Githinji, Daniel Ondieki, Dauti Kahora, Emmaus Kimani, Eric Gitonga Mong’orion,, Fedaa Sultan, Freshia Njeri, Joseph Waweru, Joseph Ndung’u, Josphat Kimathi, Kimani Kinyanjui, Lawrence (Shabu) Mwangi, Lazarus Tumbuti, Lewis Kimone, Mercy Wambui, Ngugi Waweru
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Water System Refuge #3
Cao Minghao
& Chen Jianjun
Tent fabric Installation, Black Tent Meetings
Their contribution brings together many people—herders and pastoralists, Kassel’s diverse communities, scientists, geologists, anthropologists, lumbung members, lumbung artists, and visitors. The site for interactions is a black tent—woven in yak hair and mixed fabric—installed in the park outside the Orangerie. The tent takes the form of nomadic housing used by herder groups in a region stretching from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to the eastern Tibetan Plateau. These groups use the tent not only for refuge, but as sites for governance and ritual.
Within this tent, viewers can see other components to the project: research from workshops, presentations, a new publication titled The Ecology of Sands and “Black Beach” , and the video Grass, Sand and Global Environmental Apparatus. While the tent will be partly biodegradable by the end of the exhibition, its yak hair does not“live and die” at documenta fifteen. Minghao and Jianjun have worked with the Grassland Ecological Planting Farmers’ Cooperative to facilitate production of yak hair slippers.
(From the documenta website)
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The Documenta Fifteen
presents itself this year as a global social sculpture. In the spirit of Joseph Beuys, a wide variety of artistic social pedagogical concepts are presented here, by artist groups from all over the world. The many polarising discussions show that it seems to be still a long way to go, towards real democratic thinking and acting.
Different world views and experiences have collided with each other and have provoked diverse debates. As so often, the opportunity to approach and listen to each other has not yet been sufficiently recognised. However, this can still happen as we come to terms with what has happened. I would like to give a simple comparison here. The paradise of the giraffe is not that of the bird. Nevertheless, both are wonderful animals and both can be considered equal. The bird needs not to be better than the giraffe and vice versa. In this sense I hope that this documenta has enriched the discussions and that we as humans finally learn that polarisation will not bring us further in being human, but listening and approaching each other does.
So I hope that in the future new ways will be found to continue and present the diversity of the world and the art world, as well as the values for which they stand. It is good that a non-hierarchical concept has been realised here, but it has also led to many misunderstandings. If we learn from this, similar concepts can be better elaborated and presented by adding a very background and mediating curatorial concept, dedicated to the original word kurare (to care, to be cared for, to take care, to take the trouble). The curatorial principle could be executed as a kind of merging and approaching of different ideas with a lot of sensitivity. In doing so, it should not be abused as a selective process in a one-sided way. It can help to research the background carefully and to act with attentiveness.
convergence of different ideas with a lot of sensitivity. In doing so, it should not be abused as a selective process in a one-sided way.
documentafifteen
Galerie Raum mit Licht
Kaiserstraße 32, 1070 Vienna
Soft
Opening: 06.09.2022
Duration:
07.09. - 14.10.2022, Tue – Fr 14:00 – 18:00 and by appointments
Guided
Tour: 10.09.2022, 10:00 - 14:00
With works
by: Anatoliy Babiychuk, Zoya Laktionova,
Lada Nakonechna, Olena Newkryta, Oleksiy Radynski, Anna Sorokovaya & Taras
Kovach, Anastasiya Yarovenko
Curated by:
Olena Newkryta, Anastasiya Yarovenko
Exhibition
text: Aleksei Borisionok
The exhibition Preserving
the Shape curated by the artists Olena Newkryta & Anastasiya Yarovenko presents art works that approach
notions of collective action and subjectivity, material and immaterial
heritage, and its survival. It focuses on various ways of how a collective,
communal or cultural identity could be nourished in the context of current
russian imperial warfare, destruction of living environments and public
institutions. In contrast to cultural assets that can be preserved artificially
via conservation or museum displays, community is a fragile and precarious
entity that becomes and remains only through forms of mutual care, social
plasticity and solidarity. Preserving the
Shape brings together documentary and conceptual works by Ukrainian artists
that are part of a self-organised world-making and embody an utopian or bygone
collectivity.
raum-mit-licht
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