Kenyan sculptor Elkanah Ong’esa is a household name in the international heritage and conservation circles. But in his homeland he is just another artist using rocks and stone as a medium to create art.

Despite his international fame — which includes his Bird of Peace stone sculpture that has adorned the entrance of the Unesco building in Paris, France, since 1976 — Ong’esa is little known in East Africa, let alone in his native Kisii County where he lives and works.

Indeed, it was a surprise for Kenyans in 2010 when the then US ambassador Michael Ranneberger honoured Ong’esa for his Dancing Birds sculpture, which he had offered the Americans as a gift. The sculpture remains the main attraction at the reception of the US Embassy in Nairobi.

Ong’esa is now working on a groundbreaking project of carving a sculpture depicting a family of elephants from a huge, hard granite rock.

While he is best known for soapstone sculptures, this time he has decided to experiment with granite, which is rarely used by sculptors in Kenya. However, granite is now a common medium in Asian and European sculptures.

The sculpture, under the theme “Hands Off Our Elephants” will be the centrepiece of the Kenyan exhibition at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival to be held in Washington DC, running from June to July. Kenya will be showcasing its culture, people and landscape.

After tracing him to his work site in Gesonso village in Bonchari sub-county, about four kilometres from Kisii town, Ong’esa tells us how he opted for the hard granite because getting a big soapstone block that has no internal cracks was almost impossible. 

Second, soapstone is weak and cannot withstand the rigours of shipment to the US without the danger of breaking up. Initially, Onge’sa experimented with basalt.
The sculpture will be 12 feet tall and will weigh about 18 tonnes.

“We thought of granite or basalt since it was going to be placed outside. But when we were looking for the rocks, people laughed at us, thinking that we were crazy,” said Ong’esa, who added that the initial proposal was for them to work on the project in the US but the group preferred to work in Kenya.

Samson Mogendi, a sculptor with Africod Institute of Art in Tabaka, which is about 30 kilometres from the site, is working with Ong’esa; he said the project is breaking new ground because people who have been using soapstone have never thought that granite can be turned into art.

Ong’esa is working with 10 qualified sculptors, but all of them continue to learn new techniques from the master. Among them is Justus Kilonzi, a sculptor who worked on the Mashujaa monument to mark Kenya’s Golden Jubilee last year.

The Smithsonian Folklife Festival is a special annual June-July event, sponsored by the Centre for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, and celebrates cultural traditions from around the world. The events include music and dance performances, crafts and cooking demonstrations, storytelling and discussions of cultural issues.

Exhibitors

Kenya and China were picked as two key exhibitors in this year’s festival. Under the theme “Kenya: Mambo Poa” (things are fine); the country will showcase its handling of its valued cultural and natural heritage given the increasing challenges and opportunities faced in the 21st century.

Poaching is one of the main challenges the country is facing and despite an international ban on the sale of ivory in 1989, its elephant population has dwindled significantly due to rampant poaching to feed the demand for ivory in the black market, especially in Asia.

For instance, a recent aerial census of elephants and other large mammals in the Tsavo-Mkomazi ecosystem (in Kenya and Tanzania) by the Kenya Wildlife Service revealed that the elephant population is now at 11,000 compared with 12,573 in 2011.

The Elephants Neighbours Centre in Kenya recently announced that there has been a rapid decrease of elephant populations in the past 40 years, from 167,500 in 1975 to 26,500 elephants now.

This year, Kenya will sponsor between 80 and 120 individuals to the festival from various communities who will interact with artists who work with everything from clay and soapstone to recycled materials.

The visitors to the Kenyan stand in Washington DC will learn about important fossil discoveries in the Great Rift Valley; run with Kenya’s Olympic athletes, and dance to both traditional and contemporary music from different regions in the country.

According to Elizabeth Ouma of the National Museums of Kenya, who is currently seconded to the Ministry of Culture, the Kenyan exhibition will include three cultural elements: People and landscape; cradle of humanity; and creativity and innovation.

Ong’esa’s sculpture — which will showcase Kenya’s efforts to conserve of its now endangered elephant population — will be auctioned during the festival for the development of arts and culture.

However, the sculpture is slightly different from the initial model, which showed a family of elephants with their trunks raised in an attempt to hide their tusks.

Ong’esa is upset that over 65 elephants have been killed since January, accusing the authorities of lethargy. “For poachers with guns to roam around our game parks, that is equivalent to a foreign invasion,” said the 70-year old sculptor. 

He believes that Kenyans must help the government in its conservation efforts by creating visual art, music and drama that promote the conservation of elephants and rhinos.

Ong’esa is yet to receive his payment of Ksh3.5 million ($39,000) for his Bird of Peace sculpture, which adorns the Unesco headquarters in Paris. This is despite the world cultural organisation having given the country Ksh5 million ($56,000).

To date, Unesco seeks Ong’esa’s permission to use his work in their publications, while successive Kenyan governments have never properly recognised his masterpieces.

Another prominent sculpture of his is Man Landing on the Moon, which was part of his final year major project at the University of Makerere, Uganda.

The piece is still exhibited at the Makerere Art Gallery and was loaned for international exhibition to the Science and Space Museum in Washington, DC.

Family

Born into a Kisii artisan community in 1944, Ong’esa’s parents and grandfather were part of the local arts scene. He decided to follow in their footsteps and his key mentor was Kenya’s second vice president Joseph Murumbi, whose love for art and culture can be seen in his collection at the Kenya National Archives, in Nairobi.

He studied fine arts at Kenyan and Ugandan universities; completed a postgraduate thesis on East African stone carving in Kenya, and gained a M.Ed in teaching of art from McGill University in Canada.

He is an art consultant in many universities overseas such as; Hofstra University, New York, and other institutions in New Jersey, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Dallas, all in the US.

In 1987, he travelled to the Arctic areas of Canada and worked with Eskimo green stone carvers, and in 2009, he was elected first president of the newly formed Pan-African Association of Visual Arts. In 2011, Ong’esa was an artist-in-residence in Lingnan University, Hong Kong.

Locally, Ong’esa has served as a senior lecturer for creative arts at the Kisii Teachers College as well as holding teaching roles in Africa and North America. He has established his own art school in the Kisii region.