Sebawali Sio’s solo exhibition debuts at One Off Gallery

Sebawali Sio is a woman with scads of energy and curiosity just as large.

“I love learning new things,” the artist told BD Life at the opening of her first solo exhibition at One Off Gallery in Nairobi. It is one of two solo exhibitions that opened last weekend at One Off— hers is in the Loft, while Elias Mun’gora’s is in the Stables.

Hers is the one with the rich mix of artistic genres, including glass and fibreglass sculptures at the centre of the show surrounded by an abundance of paintings, prints, and watercolours on all the walls.

Yet as diverse, edgy, and experimental as her artworks are, they can hardly hint at the circuitous journey that Seba has been on before her discovery that she was destined to be a fine artist as well as one of the few female sculptors in Kenya, apart from the award-winning Maggie Otieno.

Yet Seba’s realisation that fine art was the path she wanted to pursue came long after she’d studied law, international finance, and banking as well as other sundry subjects that didn’t satisfy her passion for learning or her purpose to put into practice new insights related to truth and beauty.

Sebawali Sio, an artist during her exhibition at One Off Gallery in Nairobi on October 2, 2023. PHOTO | POOL

How she found her way to Brush Tu Artists Collective a few years back is another story, but it was there that she began working with other artists to experiment with various media and methods for making art.

“I still consider myself a member of Brush tu although I’m currently working closely with Kevin Oduor at Kuona (Artists Collective, formerly known as Kuona Trust). He’s my mentor in sculptural techniques and the use of materials like resin and fibreglass,” she added.

It is those materials, crafted into a series of sculptures that serve to expose Seba’s affinity for women as a central theme in her art. We could see it in her sculptures but also in her paintings, which equally convey her love of women and love of being one as well.

While I feel Seba’s sculptures are the strongest works in this show (although it is difficult to compare 2D versus 3D art), I have to say that her perspective as a painter has also grown. It’s as if her previous paintings of women kept them in hiding.

But at One Off, her women come alive as she now uses stronger strokes and colours to make clearer statements about women’s emotions and their impact on their lives.

Meanwhile, next door in the Stables, Elias Mun’gora changes the subject altogether. Exploring the hot topic of history, and the salient subject of land, Mun’gora becomes a symbolic storyteller. He uses the issue of colonialism in East Africa, first by the Germans and later by the British.

Either way, they came as land-grabbers intent on claiming whatever land they wanted while leaving Africans paupers, displaced and exiled in their own land.

It’s no surprise to see Mun’gora taking up this topic since he comes from that region, the one the British claimed to identify with as they said it had similarities with their homeland.

But the colonial land grab led many of the locals to rise in rebellion, a movement the Brits named ‘Mau Mau’. But among themselves, locals called their initiative ‘The Land and Freedom Army’.

Sebawali Sio’s sculpture at One Off Gallery in Nairobi on October 2, 2023. PHOTO | POOL

The army fought to retrieve their land and to oust the Brits altogether. Unfortunately, after their leader Field Marshall Dedan Kimathi was arrested and hung, the movement lost its momentum.

But Mun’gora’s show illustrates that this important history has not been forgotten, only re-imagined from a Kenyan’s perspective. But it left future generations food for thought and the perpetual concern over land.

One point his art is making is that land grabbing continues to take place even now. It happens by Africans against their neighbours as well as by their former colonisers and neo-colonisers like the Chinese and Indians.

Through his amazing artworks, he reveals how and where these practices are taking place, and the passivity with which Africans are still incredulous about what’s happened to their homeland.

Sebawali Sio’s sculpture at One Off Gallery in Nairobi on October 2, 2023. PHOTO | POOL

Images of men standing around also reflect traumatised people who were so cruelly treated, first through the loss of their land and then by the cruelty of colonisers and their African conduits.

Mungora had only brought 10 of these post-colonial paintings to One Off, but each one contains an encyclopedic account of Kenyan history that deserves to be documented or at least turned into someone’s doctoral dissertation explaining all that Elias reveals in his mixed media art.

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