By KARI MUTU

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A group of Kenyan artists is challenging the recently witnessed race to space and offering an alternative future for planet earth at the Lamu Space Station, an arts installation at the Lamu archipalego.

The artists want space players like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to "come back to earth and focus on trying to make life exciting and sustainable here."

"The presumption that we can deplete all the resources on Earth and escape to another planet is delusional at best and extremely dangerous," says the exhibition statement.

The Lamu Space Station is the brainchild of US-born visual artist and photojournalist Ajax Axe, in collaboration with five Kenyan artists.

“My obsession as an artist is with the future,” said Axe, who splits her time between East Africa and the US.

A futuristic solo sculpture exhibition she held in 2016 in Aspen, US, brought her much artistic acclaim.

In 2017 she participated in the Lamu Arts Festival, that brought together visual artists from Africa and Europe.

Prior to the space project, Axe was assembling a prototype woven palm-fibre housing structure in her quest to creating alternative shelter for refugees in the Dadaab camp in northeastern Kenya. Her design resembles an astronaut’s pod, and it inspired the idea of developing a space station in Lamu.

“From there it snowballed into a bigger idea,” she said.

Axe is interested in arts activism and working with communities. “I like to look at local materials and local resources and use them to build new and unique stories about the future.”

Woven space pods at Lamu Space Station. PHOTO | COURTESY

Children from the Anidan Orphanage were incorporated to imagine Lamu in the distant future.

“Lamu is about 700 years old and the children are painting their hopes and fears for Lamu 700 years from now,” said Axe.

The Lamu exhibition is built inside an abandoned house on Shela Island, the rooms transformed into displays of paintings and three-dimensional pieces. Palm fibre space helmets hung from the ceiling like traditional lamp fixtures. Beneath one woven makuti (palm frond) pillar are hundreds of cigarette lighters collected from the beach, a stark reminder of the tonnes of rubbish thrown into the ocean annually.

“Lamu Space Station is important because it will enable us to create a new story that addresses our ravaged landscapes and careless material culture,” said Lamu artist Abdul Rop. His stone column of collected ocean garbage has plastic slippers, construction pipes, diving flippers and more.

Lincoln Mwangi has created a wall piece from ocean debris.

Lamu artist Shizemonize has created attractive space helmets from palm fibre, and a boat-shaped space craft with stars dangling from a large white orb.

The Lamu station is part of a worldwide arts and sustainability initiative and runs until March 20.

Axe has developed a reimagined space station in Aspen, Colorado and plans to open similar concepts in Greece and Sudan in 2023.

Long woven makuti columns hang from trees outside, a narrative of people living in harmony with the environment.