By Iminza Keboge
Published September 6, 2018
An art show that explores the ways food–in all its diversity of material forms, practices, meanings, symbolic association and values–forms and give shape to multiple experiences of and insights into urban living has opened at Nairobi National Museum (NNM).
The month-long exhibition dubbed ‘Remains, Waste and Metonymy III: Kikulacho Nairobi’ brings together visual and literary artists who look at the significance of food; the multiple functions and interplay between food, performance, ritual and identity; the spaces for food’s production, distribution and consumption; and the multiplicity of physical, social and political networks and relations in which food is embedded.
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“Our connections with food … can be interpreted as a marker of our shared humanity. There is often something inherently communal and collective about actions related to food–from growing, harvesting and slaughtering, to preparation, cooking, sharing and consumption,” write Craig Halliday and Joost Fontein on the show. “Food can, and often does, bring us together. But it can also differentiate us. Meals often become a cornerstone of communal relations.”
Food, they write, is intricately linked to belief systems, cultural contexts, senses of self and community.
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“Using the theme of food as a way to think about and contextualise the urban lives and relationships that constitute and are constituted by the city, Remains Waste and Metonymy III: Kikulacho Nairobi, opens new possibilities for exploring and understanding the complex social and material lives that make and are made by urban environments; highlighting and questioning the varied roles food, the stuff of food, and its associated practices hold within everyday urban lives in Nairobi,” Halliday and Fontein write of the show that runs in the Creativity Gallery at NNM September 3 – 30, 2018 and brings together visual painters Craig Halliday, Elias Mung’ora, Gor Soudan, James Muriuki., Joan Otieno, Joel Lukhovi, Joost Fontein, Kevo Stero, Mwini Mutuku, Onyis Martin, Wambui Kamiru and Wycliffe Opondo and writers Bethuel Muthee, Billy Kahora and Doseline Kiguru.
This is the third in a series of annual shows that were held in 2015 (Remains, Waste and Metonymy ) and 2017 (Remains, Waste and Metonymy II: Sensing Nairobi).
