Machoism, migrants and the state of man
Friday February 16 2018
From Early Machoism, by Yony Waite. PHOTO | KARI MUTU | NMG
When artist Yony Waite dressed up as a man, she thoroughly appreciated the experience of being treated differently, and while travelling in Mexico last year she came across large statues of humans based on ancient rock paintings.
The two encounters inspired many of the pieces in her exhibition called Ecce Homo, an Encounter with Early Machismo and Migrants Forever?
The show is on at the Nairobi Gallery.
“I realised how powerful it must be to be a ‘man’, wild and free, hunting with your mates… being the sole providers for the clan, family or herd,” said Waite.
In limited colours, Waite captures the semi-desert mountains of Baja California in Mexico. The painting Early Machoism, drawn in Waite’s signature dark colours, is of silhouettes of large rocks, trees, tall cactuses, a horned animal and two men in statue-like poses.
Other Early Machoism paintings on display include four framed ink drawings on paper. The illustrations take your imagination to remote, wild places, back to the time of early man.
On another wall is a tapestry of earthy colours with tasselled ends called Ecce Homo. It is a patchwork of small cloth squares stitched like a quilt and spray-painted with the dark outline of a human figure.
This is a haunting piece, perhaps expressing Waite’s view that much of today’s world is reduced to a desperate search for “survival…a home…some sort of dignity of life.”
Of the animal-themed works is Mkonokono 3, in which hyenas are painted onto a long sisal mat. In Mkonokono 4, Waite shows her signature migrating wildebeest in a dense medley of animals and plants woven into a sisal rug in cream and brown wool, and dark ink.
“Nowadays, once free moving people have become herds of landless and pathetic migrants… Now there is really no room left to roam free,” says a commentary by Waite.
Till We Have Faces is a dark, ghostly painting of dozens of blurred faces that resemble skulls. And the semi-abstract painting Homeless are ragged-looking street boys in front of high-rise buildings. Both images recall the loss of place and identity that characterise migration in the modern world.