Working in acrylic, oil and soft pastel, Sujay Shah juxtaposes seemingly unrelated man-made objects with organic materials to tell a narrative in jarring, yet intriguing fashion. A collection of his satirised paintings that critiques our colonial history featured earlier this year at an exhibition titled Forgive us our skins, at the Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi.
His pictures are filled with Victorian-era furniture, cabinets, antelopes, piano, vases, lion-skin rugs, chandeliers, stylised monkeys, crocodiles, people in yoga-like poses, paraffin lamps, teacups and more. Some of the vintage objects he paints are items he saw in his grandmother’s house, and which “hold these very British ideals of civility and civilisation,” he said.
