Tradition is a loaded term in the discourse of Africanist art history, but it is also extremely relevant to the history of modern art in Kenya. ‘Tradition’ is perceived in opposition to innovation in Eurocentric canonical modernist discourses, where innovation is understood as a core tenet of ‘modernity’ and ‘modernism’. The Euro-modernist idea that African traditions should be interpreted as the antithesis of modern industrial life and cultural progress has inhibited historians, anthropologists and cultural commentators from considering traditions of art making, cosmologies and knowledge systems of Kenyan communities as foundations of ‘Short Century’ modernity (Gladstone, 2014). To date there is no comprehensive mapping or history of traditional art forms and how they impacted on and infused modernist practices.  

If Africa was considered the ‘dark continent’ (Pakenham, 1991) by Western colonists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, then Kenya was certainly considered one of the continent’s darkest corners. In many ways, it was not seen as a land inhabited by people at all but a land of inhospitable, untamed wilderness.

Kenya, in the imagination of Western utopianists such as Theodor Hertzka, was fantasised about as an unpopulated Garden of Eden, an idyll for flora and fauna and “Freeland” as an alternative paradise. A small group of people of the so-called Freeland Association actually attempted settling in Lamu in the doomed hope to realise this utopia.  Fuelled by such fin de siècle fantasies Eastern Africa became the playground of Western ‘explorers’, botanists and trophy hunters, who dismissed Kenyan farming and civilization methods, which left little marks on the land and who saw the communities as part of a ravishing scenery [FIG 02]. These attitudes were surmised by John Roberts, a British ethnomusicologist in 1967, just after independence, in his book Kenya Today, A Land full of People: “The rationale was that in 1963 or 4… Kenya was thought of as either a land full of rather alarming politics or a land full of wild animals. So the theme was that Kenya is not a land full of interesting game or of alarming politics but of people” (Stewart, 1989).

Since the beginning of Kenya’s contact with the British and German colonists in the late 19th century, Kenyan people were fashioned by Western thinkers into fundamentally ‘non-modern’ people, whose traditions were summoned as evidence of their supposed inherent inferiority. Mudimbe describes this as the colonialism of knowledge (Mudimbe 1988:5-6). Colonialist racism at the turn of the 20th century reached new extremes, which Charles Elliot, the commissioner for British East Africa (now Uganda and mainland Kenya) expressed: “His mind [The ‘African’] “is far nearer to the animal world than that of the European or Asiatic, and exhibits something of the animals placidity and want of desire to rise beyond the state he has reached.” Elliot’s sentiments were echoed by other colonialists and colonial era adventurers such as Frederick Lugard, the British governor of colonial Nigeria, and Frederick Guggisberg and Decima Moore, colonial “Gold Coast” (Ghana) administrators and travel writers, who all contributed variously to the Eurocentric invention of colonial Africans. 

This background is fundamental to a wholesome understanding of the trajectories, both aesthetic and conceptual, which modern art took in Kenya after the Second World War and into the contemporary. It is important to understand that these views were not simply fringe opinions of disdain held by white colonial elites, but pervasive throughout colonial Kenyan society. This included its populations of colour, particularly Kenya’s Indian and South Asian minority and, to a certain extent, Kenyan Africans themselves, as Robert Johnson (2003:1) writes: “Africans and Asians sometimes adopted Western religion, education, or forms of behaviour if they felt it had something to offer them. They were not necessarily indoctrinated but were capable of opportunism. Yet the adoption could bring only limited advantage”.

The modern missionary movement preceded colonialism but became strongly entangled in it. Many Kenyans, especially those who belonged to sedentary agricultural communities near the colonial centres of Nairobi and Mombasa accepted Christian conversion, some grudgingly and some enthusiastically, whereas many of the Nomadic pastoralists in the Rift Valley – particularly the Maa speaking clans – utterly rejected Christian proselytising and colonial influence in general for most of the ‘Short Century’ liberation era (1945–1994). 

However, for the majority of Kenyans who now lived urban, capitalist lives in towns and cities, the Christian message was disseminated so successfully that “in Kenya today nobody is a greater enemy of traditional music and dancing than the devout African member of the major denominations” (Roberts, 1967:199). This remains true today.

,as Roberts (1967:199) illustrates in a telling anecdote:

“‘You will find that some areas where the missionaries first started have lost completely quite a lot of their traditional songs and traditional way of thinking.’  The speaker was a young man whose father had once been a very good harp-player, but immediately when he became a Christian he burnt all his musical instruments. ‘And I remember before I went to England for my music studies I asked him to sing some of the songs, which he used to sing. He was very shocked!’”

Kenyans were taught, either explicitly by British missionaries and teachers in schools and mission centres or, subliminally through experiencing the totalising thrust of colonial Western supremacy, that they had no art history, certainly none that could compare to the canon of the West. One of the associated colonial myths was that “the Kamba (and other communities) have no ancient and famed tradition as woodcarvers, and hardly any sculpture or representational art” (Elkan, 1958:314). But these ongoing sculptural traditions were simply not recorded by scholars to date.

What sets pre-colonial Kenya apart from other regions in Africa is the nomadic nature of large swathes of its population [FIG 03]. As pastoralists, nilotic and cushitic communities in the semi-arid Eastern region and along the Rift valley both in the North and South West were constantly on the move.

Their economy was driven almost entirely by their cattle and other stock (sheep and goats), which they would drive constantly across the country with the turn of the seasons in search of pasture. Nestled in between these pastoralist communities in the central region surrounding Mt. Kenya, the West around Lake Victoria and the forests of Kakamega and the coastal regions were sedentary farmers, the majority of whom were Bantu in language and culture. The artistic traditions of most of Kenya’s communities were ephemeral and utilitarian, and the realm of art was in the creation of articles of jewellery, furniture (both functional and ceremonial), ceramics, pottery. This is because ‘of necessity, their material culture consists of only a few easily-moveable possessions which must not be an encumbrance to them’ (Brown, 1972:27) [FIG 04]. 

With the exception of these materialisations, the human body was the preferred artistic medium, be it in performance or bodily adornment in paint as well as scarification. Furthermore, pastoralist communities in Eastern Kenya have long been followers of Islam, a religion, which prohibits the artistic production of naturalistic human or animal forms outside of geometric and calligraphic design (Brown, 1972:18). The Swahili and their neighbours, however, practised a form of Islam, which had integrated many African cosmologies and beliefs over centuries (Orchardson-Mazrui, 1993:147). 

Additionally, many communities believed in a single creator God, such as Ngai, the creator of God of the GEMA communities; Gikuyu (Kikuyu), Embu, Meru and Akamba, as well as the Maa clans. The Kikuyu believed that Ngai resides on Mt. Kenya or Kiri-Nyaga in central Kenya (Kenyatta, 1938). The southern Masai believe Ngai or Enkai resides on Ol Doinyo Lenkai, an active volcano in Northern Tanzania (Asante & Mazama, 2009). Contrastingly, the Kamba believe Ngai or Mulungu resides in the firmament. Others such as the Swahili of the coast and their neighbours like the Giriama, Duruma and Makonde, believe in a host of different animist spirits, referred to as Shetani or Mashetani (plural) (Meier, 2016). See also Unit 1 Tanzania

For all communities in Kenya, ritualistic dancing, ensemble performance and choral singing were a cornerstone of their aesthetic traditions and visual culture. Each community engaged in performance during celebrations, to accompany the divination and exorcism of spirits, and mark important events. However, the aesthetic heterogeneity of these performances cannot be overstated; Each of Kenya’s 42 tribal communities possess their own unique aesthetic traditions of ritualistic choral performance and dance to accompany the universal rites of passage: the initiation of a child into adulthood, marriage, the birthing of a child, and the commemoration of the dead.

The initiation of male children into adulthood through circumcision, for example, was a critical right common to most Kenyan communities (with the exception of the Banyala, Luo, Samia and Turkana)[FIG 05]. During their initiation ritual from uncircumcised boys to young warriors or morans (Enkipaata), as well as their ascension from morans to elders (Eunoto), Maasai men perform their renowned jumping dance called Adumu. They form a circle, into which individuals enter and jump as high as they can. The jumper’s bodies are taught and erect as they jump in tune with the rhythmic throat singing provided by those in the circle.  The Akamba perform a dance called Kilumi, which they perform as a ‘therapeutic rite comprising libations, offering, and prayers to Ngai, the Creator and Supreme Being, and Aimu, the spirits of the departed’ (Ndanu, 2020).

Kilumi is performed by elderly Akamba women, who were accompanied by a few men or women playing large wooden Kilumi drums. The dancers are usually stooped towards the ground, moving their arms and shoulders, which are draped with metallic rattles and beads. The dance is often performed during times of distress, such as a prolonged drought, or if someone is mentally or physically ailing. Hence, ‘one of the objectives of the ceremony is to seek spiritual intervention that produces rain (Koster, 2011; Akong’a, 1987). It is also believed to be a therapy for those possessed by the spirits’ (Ndunu, 2020). These are but two examples of traditional performance among Kenya’s vast cohort of ethnic communities.

Similarly, the Akamba were known as important sculptors of wood and as chain makers. The Giriama and their neighbouring communities of the coast held their totemic sculptural traditions. It is also important to underscore, that traditions varied greatly from community to community, and region to region within Kenya, whilst simultaneously tribal boundaries were not fixed. The neighbouring Maasai (pastoralists) and Kikuyu (sedentary farmers) communities had many aesthetic similarities in their artistic mediums of body adornment in red ochre and in their beaded articles of jewellery (Leaky, 1977:364). Similarly, many coastal Bantu communities have rich traditions of representational wooden sculpture, in spite of Islam being the predominant religion of the Swahili coast. 

The sculptural traditions of sedentary farming communities in Kenya resonate their rich and complex tapestry of beliefs and cosmologies. Sculpture was one common medium, which people used to honour and appease certain spirits, in particular those of the ancestors. As well as this, community healers and diviners used sculpture as a conduit of ‘magic’ to protect themselves from malevolent spirits and dangerous animals, to heal sickness and other afflictions, as well as inflict those same afflictions (Orchardson-Mazrui, 1993). The Giriama community of the coast erected grave posts known as Kigango, which are narrow wooden posts, about a third of a metre wide and approximately a metre high. A Kigango is used to honour the spirit of a revered or respected member of Giriama society once they depart and are erected over the grave of the deceased. They are not realist sculptures, but are an abstract representation of the departed spirit. The heads of Vigango vary considerably, some bearing recognizable features and others being wholly abstract. The body of these sculptures are carved with a variety of symmetrical patterns. Some have short straight arms, others bear no other human features and are thin smooth planks. 

Many have argued that these pre-colonial traditions, with the introduction of Christianity, are absent from Kenya’s contemporary manifestation of modernist art. A more accurate reading of modernism in the ‘Short Century’ in Kenya is that these traditions were radically transformed in the 20th century. Indigenous worldviews and cosmologies have to a certain extent been supplanted by Christianity and Islam, the two dominant religions of modern Kenya. [FIGs 07, 08 and 09] New mediums of art making were also introduced to Kenyans in the early 20th century, such as painting in oils and acrylics on canvas, which is one of the main mediums used by modernist artists in Kenya. 

Access to education and foreign art media in colonial Kenya was made conditional on one’s proximity to Christian missions and other colonial agents, as well as one’s (or one’s family’s) acceptance of Christianity and Western cultural conventions as synonymous with modernity and development. Kenyans who lived near or in urban centres, such as Nairobi, educated their children in missions and mission schools. Contrastingly, communities outside of regions where missionaries entrenched themselves in the late 19th century, in particular the North East and North West of the country, had hardly any access to formal education until well into the 20th century, and emerged at independence with their pre-colonial cultures and traditions to a certain extent undiminished.

The colonial government prioritised vocational training for semi-skilled and menial labour in their education policies. Furthermore,  no attempts were made to either “build from or incorporate aspects of the existing ethnic educational systems, including their art” (Court, 1985:37). This attitude shifted with the arrival of Margaret Trowell in East Africa in 1929, who personally cultivated a ‘genuine appreciation of African cultures and cultural practices’, and whose education system supported East Africans to reconcile artistic practices with the demands of industrial modernity (Wolukau-Wanambwa, 2014:111). Trowell as a contested directional mediator for colonial education and as the founder of East Africa’s only tertiary art school will be discussed more in Unit 3 Kenya.

After the First World War Kenya’s modernist history began with two schools, or networked models of creating modern art. The first were those who were educated in missions and high schools and later, almost exclusively at Margaret Trowell’s School of Fine Art at Makerere, Kampala. The second are those who did not receive curricular art training at elite colonial schools, but developed self-determined associations and co-operatives, which apprenticed young men as sculptors. The work and contributions of individuals belonging to the first school have been thoroughly studied in the discourse of Africanist art history as examples of modern African art.  The work and contributions of individuals belonging to the second school have not been afforded the same attention.

However, it is in this body of work where we can observe the transformation of traditional forms of art making into a modernist practice during the early 20th century most keenly. The practical elements of these traditions – the techniques and tools used to craft works in stone and wood – have changed remarkably little for centuries. One of the earliest and greatest misconceptions about the work of this movement is that it is impersonal, industrialised and mass produced, the work of machinery in a factory (Elkan, 1958:314). This could not be further from the truth:“The carvings are made by hand with tools that were in common use before this century and they are sold in the first instance either by the men who carved them or, more commonly, by Kamba ‘dealers’, who may have started as carvers but who eventually have found trade more profitable than manufacture” (Elkana, 1958:314). Both sedentary farmers and nomadic pastoralists in Kenya had centuries old practices as smelters and blacksmiths of iron. Consequently many of the tools used to sculpt by contemporary sculpting cooperatives, such as hammers, chisels, and adzes, look much the same today as they did countless generations ago. What has changed is the forms and subjects in their work, and this is entirely due to the fact that their main source of patronage changed drastically, as Sidney Kasfir (2007) wrote:

“The colonial rupture put artisans of all kinds on their mettle by imposing radically new conditions of production and patronage and in doing so actually widening the scope for creativity in certain arenas even as it foreclosed on many others”. Prior to the late 19th century, artists and craftsmen (sculptors, blacksmiths, beadworkers) were patronised by members of their immediate community to create countless articles – sculptures, figurines, ceremonial sticks, headdresses, jewellery, etc – for various ceremonial and aesthetic purposes. The fee for their services was usually another commodified item bartered with their client. A Gikuyu blacksmith would perhaps require a number of goats, food stuffs, a gourd of honey or mead (mũratina), or a pelt in exchange for a large smithied object like a spear or sword. However, “a regular customer could always go to a smith and get small objects, such as ankle bells, small knives, arrow heads, etc. free” (Leakey, 1977:304).

Such barter trade was also common between different communities, particularly in works of art like wooden and stone sculpture, as well as wire and beadwork [FIG 09]. People from various communities across the region would travel vast distances to barter with the Gusii (Kisii) in Western Kenya for various articles carved in their soapstone like pipes, board games and various wares (Akama, 2018). So too did members of different communities travel to Ukambani in the South East to barter for their chain work, as well as brass and copper wirework (Leakey, 1972:483). The Akamba, skilled as medicine men in the divination and appeasement of spirits as well as in community regulating ‘magic’, would often ‘obtain a pair of carved figures, representing a male and a female, from the Giriama and or Digo whose sorcery is considered to be more potent than their own’ (Brown, 1972:20). 

These artists and craftsmen lost their sources of patronage, as well as their cultural roles within their own societies, because colonialism led to the loss of their land, the destruction of their barter economy as well as the suppression of traditional cosmologies and religions. As people were forced to work for pittance wages and no longer venerated the spirits embodied in traditional forms of sculpture, artisans and artists looked for alternatives to make a living from their craft. There was a ready and willing market for these sculptures and other artworks in the settlers responsible for the destruction of their traditional setting. The market for the ‘curio’ sculptures of Kenya was from its inception European settlers and visitors. It marks the moment that traditional self-taught artists altered and transformed the aesthetics of their traditional craft to meet the demands and desires of this new market.

Mutisya Munge, undoubtedly the founder of modernist Kamba sculpture in Kenya, was a renowned sculptor of ceremonial sticks used by medicine men and diviners as well as articles of furniture in Ukambani before he was drafted to serve on behalf of the British in the First World War [FIG 10]. It was Munge who first saw the economic potential of sculpting Askari figurines, after British officers offered to buy statuettes of his fellow soldiers, which he sculpted in his leisure time in the army. Munge witnessed how the Lutheran mission at Maneromanga (Tanzania) sponsored a group of sculptors from the Zaramo community and patronised their work [FIG 11]. He adapted the subjects of his work from traditional ceremonial sticks into forms that he knew would be popular among his European market, most notably the incredibly attractive ‘Askari’ figurines derived from his musings in the army as well as forms of indigenous men adorned as warriors (often Maasai Morans), women in traditional dress and various wildlife. What started out as a practice between Munge and his sons in Wamunyu has transformed into an artistic tradition practised by an entire community of people (and eventually an entire country), which grossed as much as £28,000 in 1956 (approximately £819,830 today) and is still thriving. 

Much work has been done by indigenous African art historians in the 1980’s and 90’s to challenge and subvert the sentiments held by Western commentators of Kenyan art at the beginning of the ‘Short century’. We have seen that indigenous Kenyans did indeed have long traditions of art making underpinned by a rich and complex set of cosmologies and religious beliefs, in spite of white supremacist assertions that Kenya’s communities were ‘artistically barren’ before the arrival of Europeans (Roberts, 1967:200) . Furthermore, we have seen how these traditions were transformed into a modernist practice to function in a newly introduced capitalist economy at the beginning of the ‘Short Century’. However, certain infantilizing tropes and elitist attitudes towards Kenyan artists still persist when analysing art made by modern Kenyans in the 20th century. One point in particular requires repeated emphasis; the fact that the work of sculptors belonging to collective cooperative societies are still not engaged with as modernist works of art in the ‘Short Century’, but as tribal ‘curios’ and ‘handcrafts’. Furthermore, the artists who produce these works are often regarded as mere peddlers of cheap trinkets rather than artists in their own right. 

It can be argued that their practice, which ‘results in the construction of artefacts (brass casting, weaving, pottery making, etc.) is seen as a form of work, not qualitatively very different from farming, repairing radios, or driving a taxi’ (Kasfir, 1992:45). However, ‘this does not mean that is not “serious”-work is indeed serious, but that it is viewed matter-of-factly as aiming to satisfy the requirements set down by patrons. One does whatever is necessary to become a successful practitioner’ (Kasfir, 1992:45). But we have seen that the modernist traditions of sculpture found within these collectives are deeply considered, and carefully maintained or altered, and not apathetically mass-produced knick-knacks. That they are aware that their patrons are endeared to certain aesthetics and create accordingly does not take away their aesthetic sensibility and agency, or their sense of quality and standards. Nor does it make these artists immune to innovation, as we have seen with the case of the founder of this acculturated tradition of modernist sculpture, Mutsiya Munge. 

The modern sculpture of Kamba, Kisii and other communal collectives in the ‘Short Century’ was greatly influenced by traditions and aesthetics from outside their communities, particularly Kamba sculpture’s incorporation of aesthetics from coastal communities in both Kenya and Tanzania. These artworks were created “for the sale to a wide public”, rather than for internal consumption by the community which birthed them (Miller, 1975:25). The clientele who patronised and consumed Akamba, Giriama, Kisii and Swahili works of art in the beginning of the ‘Short Century’ were almost exclusively Western settlers, itinerant colonial soldiers and after the Second World War, tourists (Elkan, 1958) (Dick-Read, 1964).

Contrastingly, the East African community whose traditional art has been most thoroughly researched in the discourse of Africanist art history are the Makonde, who originate in Northern Mozambique, but whose locales are found in Southern Tanzania adjacent to Dar es Salaam as well as the Southern Coastal region of Kenya. A discussion of Makonde sculpture can be found in Unit 1 Tanzania. Whereas Mutsiya Munge initiated a radical change in Kamba sculpture by incorporating different aesthetics from different communities in the 1920’s, Makonde artists like Samaki Likankoa and Robert Yakoboo Sangwani created new aesthetics of Makonde sculptures rooted in Makonde cosmologies and worldviews in Dar es Salaam in the 1960’s (Jengo, 2021:55). Likankoa invented the Shetani genre of Makonde sculpture, which depicts malevolent shetani spirits mentioned earlier in this essay, which are acknowledged by communities across East Africa as shapeshifters in abstract, often contorted and amorphous abstract human and animal forms [FIG 12]. Sangwani invented the ujamaa genre of Makonde sculpture, often described as ‘Tree of life’. 

This style depicts a Makonde wrestling game called dimoongo (“power of strength” in Kimakonde) According to Elias Jengo, it is characterised by a column of intertwined figures with a lone figure at the top. The lone figure symbolises the winner of the wrestling game held high on the shoulders of the fans (Jengo, 2021:53). These styles were so popular among tourists in Dar Es Salaam in the 1960’s that they inevitably made their way to the ‘curio shops’ and tourist markets in Nairobi and Mombasa. That the Makonde migrated to Tanzania and settled around Dar es Salaam is well known, but what is perhaps less common knowledge is that a handful of Makonde families migrated to Kenya’s coastal region to work on colonial sisal and sugar plantations as early as 1948 (UNHCR, 2015). Today, their descendants number around 4000 thousand people (UNHCR, 2015). 

Indeed, we have seen that, although heterogeneous, different communities interacted with and influenced each other’s aesthetic traditions. The idea that indigenous communities in East Africa were completely autonomous, according to Sidney Kasfir (1992:52), is an oversimplification; regarding the Makonde sculpture movement, she asserts that many of these sculptures were not necessarily made by ethnic Makonde themselves:“…a brisk business exists in Maconde sculpture as well as in copies of it. The Maconde do not live in Kenya, but it is still profitable to take their work across the Kenyan-Tanzanian border from Dar es Salaam…While a practiced eye can tell the difference, street hawkers in both Nairobi and Mombasa manage to sell “Maconde” carvings that are made by non-Maconde carvers working in the industrial area of the two cities.” 

Renowned sculptor Samuel Wanjau (1938-2013) began his practice working in a Kamba sculpting collective which produced and sold figurines in Nairobi. Wanjau is a Kikuyu, but both he and his descendants have utilised Munge’s aesthetic methodologies to propel their modernist practice.  Like Munge, Wanjau was a soldier. Whereas Munge served in the colonial forces in the 1920s, Wanjau was a member of the Mau Mau rebellion 30 years later; ‘Samuel Wanjau made his contribution to the struggle for Kenyan independence carving gunstocks for the freedom fighters in the 1950’s’ (Karmali, 2003:117) [FIG 14]. After the rebellion, ‘Wanjau joined a carvers’ co-operative, first in Mombasa, later in Gikomba in Nairobi.’ (Karmali, 2003:117) Wanjau eventually pursued his own career, selling carvings individually at Nairobi City Market. 

Elimo Njau invited Wanjau to work at the Paa ya Paa Arts Centre, where Njau encouraged him to ‘explore new techniques and to express, in wood and stone, the originality that he repressed for so long’ (Karmali, 2003:117). However, his most famous work shows how keenly he was influenced by Kamba sculpting collectives [Fig 15]. In the early 1970’s, the Kenyan Government commissioned Wanjau to make a sculpture of Dedan Kimathi, ‘the foremost Mau Mau leader who died in 1956’ (Muthama, 2016:64). The sculpture was to be unveiled outside the Office of the Attorney General at Sheria House, however, ‘the then Attorney General, Charles Mugane Njonjo, did not approve this choice and the statue of Kimathi was never installed.’ (Muthama, 2016:2024). The enlarged head atop a compressed body are typical aesthetics found within the canon of modern Akamba sculpture. Wanjau’s own unique expressionist aesthetics are of course visible, but the way he renders Kimathi’s appendages, uniform and weaponry are unmistakably similar to traditional Kamba Askari figurines.

To conclude, Eurocentric ideas of ethnic autochthony and modern fantasies of untainted, unchanging traditions of African art are unsuited to capture the heterogeneity and transcultural foundations of Kenyan modern art. It is important to understand how pre-colonial local religions, worldviews and cosmologies are foundational to the artistic practice of Kenyans prior to and into the ‘Short Century’. These pre-colonial epistemologies (knowledge systems) were radically transformed, and in some cases abandoned, by the turn of the 20th century [FIGs 16 and 17]. In Kenya today, 82.1% of the population identify as Christian, 11.2 % identify as Muslim, and only 1.7% of the population identify as traditionalists, or practise traditional religion (Scroope, 2018).  This manifests in Kenya’s contemporary modernist practice, where images of Jesus, The Virgin Mary and other religious icons are just as pervasive in the figurines of sculptural collectives as Askari figurines were at the beginning of the ‘Short Century’.