Sane Wadu: I Hope So curated by Mukami Kuria and Angela Muritu

Abstract

The retrospective Sane Wadu: I Hope So was the inaugural Kenyan show of the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute (NCAI) (Fig. 1). It was plentiful in themes of self-reflection, self-parody, resistance and Wadu’s artistic brilliance. In a career spanning forty years, the painter, educator, and poet (b. 1954) initially depicted everyday struggles and ideals of the lives of ordinary Kenyans in watercolor and oil paint. After five years of painting fulltime, Wadu started to reveal wider sociopolitical “manifestos”—often satirical—in impasto oil paint. Viewers of this retrospective were constantly implored to reevaluate their own understanding of Kenyan histories and narratives through Wadu’s lens. Originally named Walter Njuguna Mbugua, Wadu renamed himself Sane Mbugua Wadu as a typically wry response to his critics who labelled him “insane” for leaving a stable job as a teacher to make art that “did not fit” what gallerists were looking for in the 1980s (Nyache 1995: 185). As a whole, the exhibition made it evident that Wadu is a pioneer of the African modernist art movement, forging ahead with sensitive subject matters in a time of censorship of the arts in Kenya, where “safe” subjects were preferred by gallerists and the government (Mboya 2007). Wadu has been internationally recognized, featuring in the 1995 exhibition Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa and mentioned for his innovative modes of expression in publications such as Contemporary African Art (Kasfir 1990: 81–83), Angaza Afrika: African Art Now (Spring 2008: 316; see also Pruitt and Causey 1993: 135–55; Nyache 1995: 183–87). The paintings gleamed in the new space of the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute (NCAI), designed by the multi-award-winning architectural firm Adjaye Associates. Situated in the beautiful—but slightly empty—Rosslyn Riviera Mall, Nairobi, a ten minute-drive from the largest mall in East Africa, one could see why Wadu’s work was chosen as the inaugural show for NCAI in Kenya. His egalitarian philosophy (Londardi 2020) diffused the international elitism of the NCAI and the mall itself. Curated by US-based Mukami Kuria and Nairobi-based Angela Muritu, the first room, entitled “The Early Years,” showed Wadu’s experimentation with painting styles. There were successes in Bless This Our Daily Bread (1984), which referenced the arduousness of absolute faith, and in Come Closer (1984), where hens were exquisitely revealed with a few confident watercolor brush strokes. In the following room, “The Next 30 Years,” Unidentified Fear (1989), Black Moses (1993) (Fig. 2), and the haunting Night Shift (2000) (Fig. 3) showed Wadu thriving in his lucid artistic eloquence. Furthermore, a collage of eight observational works featuring natural subjects, beamed joyfully from one wall (Fig. 4). This collection included Wadu’s familiar recurring anteater image, showered by stars in a night sky, and a sunflower (Less Nectar, 2004) as a commentary on food production systems and labor. The final room presented archival documents showing how Wadu and his artist wife, Eunice Wadu, cofounded the Ngecha Artist Association1 with artists including Wanyu Brush (b. 1947) and Chain Muhandi (b. 1957). Sidney Littlefield Kasfir stated that “Ngecha artists embodied ‘art coming from art’ organically instead of influenced from the patronage of gallerists” (Kasfir 1999: 83). 1 Opening at NCAI, I Hope So: Sane Wadu. Photo: Julian Mainjali Courtesy of NCAI