The Stranger in Me
“The title … The Stranger in Me, references a feeling of disconnect between external perceptions and descriptions about the artist’s work and internal motivations and desires. In these newer works, Kaloki says he “allowed the charcoal to flow and saw what came out” … It is an artistic craving that cannot and should not be inhibited.”
This gap between how the world sees us and how we see ourselves is near universal. Creators and artists are acutely aware of how others receive our work, how an audience fits us into an understanding or model of the world. Life can feel like a never ending journey of trying to bridge that gap between external perceptions, and internal motivations and desires.
This quote still speaks to me 8 years after I wrote it as part of an article for the local paper in Nairobi about my friend Dickson. I was describing his upcoming show – a show where he was balancing his artistic urges and creative exploration with the evolution of a successful series of paintings, which his audience already loved.
Dickson was an artist, a rising star in the Nairobi art scene. We met less than 24 hours after I started a new life in Nairobi, Kenya, jet-lagged but convinced that talking to creative people was the most logical way to begin to understand this city. I was between places and identities. Recently a student, currently an almost-entrepreneur, ideas and pitch deck prepared. Previously, a New Yorker, now waiting on a Kenyan residency card. Identity in flux.
In Dickson’s studio, he worked and we talked about Nairobi, the growth of the city, the art scene, inequality, the massive and sprawling slums, music.
The Stranger in Me was a showcase of Dickson’s work that I helped to organize in 2014, pulling together two distinct sets of paintings: Classic paintings of Nairobi’s informal settlements, and a set of bold portraits of women. His slum series has earned him acclaim (and money) in the past. But these women came from somewhere deep inside of Dickson, a sharp turn from his paintings of slum structures, quiet moments, and life along the Kanaro river. Glancing or sometimes staring at you outright, they ask what you, too, might be hiding.
Life along the Kanaro
It was because Dickson painted slums that we became so close. Transitioning from a student of rapid urbanization to a low-cost healthcare entrepreneur building in and for slums, I found insight in his paintings that helped inform my business.
Nairobi was changing, in some neighborhoods much faster than others, and the in-between spaces that separated crowded one-room homes from gated communities with manicured lawns were disappearing. I saw this on my daily commute and I saw it in Dickon’s art. I wrote:
“There is a tension in these paintings, as urbanisation causes both slums and cities to expand, at times overflowing into each other. The grey area between a formal and informal structure is explored. The Nairobi skyline is present; at times familiar and at times forecasting a city of the not-so-distant future. As buildings take over slums and crowded informal settlements are traded for crowded apartments, Kaloki’s paintings question conventional narratives of progress and reflect the artist’s sadness for the characters and stories in the slums that will disappear alongside the slapdash structures.”
The Nairobi River, or the Kanaro, was present in most paintings. Polluted from the sewage plants, the industrial area, and the thousands and thousands of homes that line it, the river creeps through many of Nairobi’s slums. I’ve seen it run purple next to the paint factory by my first clinic. Often hidden in the aerial shots showing the scale of the slums, the Kanaro can also sustain life. Early on I learned about the informal firefighters of Mukuru, who unlike the near-nonexistent national emergency services could mobilize in minutes, who would run to it for water to put out the frequent fires.
Through art I quietly reflected on the character of the places where I was now spending much of my free time. It certainly gave me an unconventional “in”– through conversations with people who had lived there. At conferences, experts presented charts and punchy statistics about the problems facing the slums. The informal economy in the informal settlements. My friends worked in the informal economy and when I was later invited to speak at conferences as an expert on digital health and social enterprise, I talked plainly about life on the Kanaro.
At The Stranger in Me exhibit, Dickson was saying goodbye to the style that had made him known and saying goodbye to the Kanaro river. I wrote about his transition:
“The artist stood in one place in the Futo Nyayo slums and painted ten different angles of Kanaro. If one were to take down the series from the walls, the paintings would fit together like puzzle pieces creating one 360 view of the spot. While Kaloki’s personal connection to the Kanaro, influenced by his upbringing in the Mukuru slums, has given it a place in most of his previous works, The Other Side of Town [refers to half of the paintings in The Stranger in Me exhibit] is closure for that place. These are the last ten paintings where the Kanaro will feature, and then Kaloki is ready to move to a different place. We are all excited to see where he will go.”
The Stranger in Me
The article that I wrote is about Nairobi and a fast growing city, and it is about permission and intuition. It is about trust, and giving an inner artist room to play and grow. It is a plea for us to give ourselves and the people we love the room to explore.
When I wrote about Dickson’s art, the words flew onto the page.
When I started writing online years later, the act of writing took a lot more work. As I thoughtfully picked the issues and themes that mattered the most to me, I forgot about the flow I could get into when writing while inspired.
I struggle to give myself permission to write about art in my newsletter, which I promised you all would be about Vital Neighborhoods.
Like Julia Cameron, author of The Artists’ Way, writes: “Trial-and-error … pulls the rug out from underneath our seriousness. We don’t really have a nice big block to stand behind while we “figure things out.”
It’s funny how we give the people around us an empathy we often deny ourselves. Back then, I advocated for Dickson’s creative freedom. I believed it helped make him the exciting artist he is today, but I don’t always give myself that same permission.
Bridging that gap between external perceptions and internal motivations takes some work getting to know yourself. For Dickson, artistic urges were coming out on the canvas.For me, they are starting to come out on the page. Paying attention to how we investigate ourselves and the world around us is a first step to embracing a shift in– or an evolution of our identity.
Do you have a stranger in you?
How can you get to know her today?
My first / only commissioned work. True to character, Dickson painted me a few surprises including the “reversible” nature of the painting (there is no right side up or upside down), and if you look closely you might also find me in there.
Links
My first published article, The Stranger in Me.
Dickson does not maintain one online home, but you can read about him and see some recent works here.