Client: Kounkuey Design Initiaitive

Overview

Artist-initiated public art research, design and fabrication project exploring the relationship between soil health and community health. On a travel grant to subSaharan Africa to explore the impacted of depleted soils, Helen created partnerships with Kounkuey Design Initiative, the international urban planning non-profit, ICRAF (World Agroforestry Institute) an NGO and informally with the United Nations Environmental Program. Helen found an opportunity to reify her research and add to a community improvement effort led by KDI in Kibera, the unplanned community in central Nairobi. Helen met with community liaisons, and local leaders to propose and fund public art for a planned construction project. Her designs were implemented by community artisans, working in her Nairobi studio. The art was installed on the new produce vendor kiosks. Funded through Art Matters, Inc. and USArtists.org with in-kind support from local non-profits, community groups and the kindness of Kiberans.

Goals

A primary goal was to engage the community in care of their produce and by inference their land, through the work and thinking of artists and planners. A secondary goal was to build connection between underresoruced artisans and the greater creative community through recognition and employment.

Process

The community of 150,000 was managed by a series of overlapping precincts. I worked with the leadership in the district through introductions provided by KDI. I interviewed artisans and steelworkers to create the project, and with the urban planners to develop a site. The plaques are captioned in English (the official language) and Swahili (the national language), on request of the community.

Additional Information

This first public art created with and by the Kibera community, the project created an exchange of skills between the self-taught sign painters and the university trained artist. The two artisans hired for the project admired the techniques of painted perspective and commercial advertising; one began to feature it in his work, which led to new commissions beyond Kibera.