African Artists' Letter for the Promotion of African Art

                     A Letter to the Kenyan Government
                     to Expand our African Arts Programs

                                             Written by African Artist, Martin Bulinya and
                                          edited by True African Art .com founder, Gathinja Yamokoski

          

                                      Delivered to Kenya's Ministry of Culture in January, 2011

                                                           If you would like to support African art,
                                       please feel free to share this with other agencies and officials.
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The most critical, cultural event that has ever taken place in Kenya has been the attainment of Independence. The triumph of that liberating feat on December 12th, 1963 opened the door for a free Kenyan culture, but its African artists’ talents and contribution to that culture are still yet to be fully realized.

I, Martin Bulinya, am a proud Kenyan and an accomplished African artist of many years. I paint Black artworks with African themes and subjects. You can see my works across galleries in Nairobi and on the international website True African Art.com.

I paint because I want to share with others the pictures that stand out so strongly in my mind when I reflect on my beloved Kenya. The images in my mind are not the ordinary art of the common genre found across the world. They communicate to me memories and histories of my homeland and the African people, family and friends whom I love so dearly. They summarize the joy, simplicity, and community of our African Kenyan people and the beautiful landscape and wildlife that surround them.

Because of the many years of my life as a painter, I know much of the extended Black art culture that comes with it and the African artists that create it. From years of surveying these sources, I know that we are lacking from our national government a promotion and acknowledgement of our African artworks that capture so well the life we have lived throughout the ages.

This letter to our government is one attempt from many people over the years to bring attention and change to the value our country’s aesthetic art can bring to us as a nation.

What can it bring? Beauty, pride, enthusiasm, and a more positive outlook that citizens and communities can share together about our beloved Kenya. One only needs to look at a curated sample of our African artists’ works to be inspired and see that it can indeed conjure a common identification of a people and reflection of the unique culture that we so dearly treasure.

Looking at the developed world, they take pride in their masters. Spain takes pride in Pablo Picasso, France is proud of the Matisse, Monet; the Dutch parade, Vincent van Gogh while the Italians take pride in Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Funny enough, Kenya takes pride in its natural heritage in wildlife and we have artists who are celebrated in other parts of the world, but not back at home in Kenya.

Kenya is yet to live through a moment of creative artistic and literary explosion, without the public enjoying a great deal of this creativity because the elites are ignorant of Kenyan Black art or lost in the arts of the foreign lands. In government offices, other than the President’s portrait, the walls are full of pictures or calendars from foreign embassies. Kenyan elites are yet to know of their own nation’s cultural African art.

In 2005, I was in Saugatuck, Michigan, United States and was surprised to see that in a small town there were more than 50 art galleries and multiple museums. Back in Nairobi, there are to date only three art galleries, three Museums and four major libraries. Even in the whole wide Republic of Kenya there are a few museums, six theaters, a number of libraries, a handful of private art galleries, and a few cultural centers. In a country blessed with 42 nationalities, all beaming and radiating rich cultures, it makes me sad that we are all left to not be able to document our histories because of a lack of organization and initiative from our government.

I am not one to complain and I am a very patient and understanding person. But when I see for years a genre neglected, hoping that in time that it will become better regulated and it does not, that leaves me frustrated and disappointed in my country’s leadership.

You may say, “do it yourself.” Well, I say to you, the fact is we as contemporary African artists already have! We have created the material. We have thought of and documented our histories and experiences through all the forms art takes, even in language books. The problem comes in the fact that the African art we create is left to be wild and unformatted in any collective source, leaving it to be spread around the world where it cannot be easily gathered and often gets lost when we seek it out.

The fact is our art from Africa is not collected in our own country, but is thankfully collected by visitors that bring it outside the country. But it leaves Kenya quite quickly without any average citizen knowing anything about it. This is a good thing for African artists economically, but when it comes time to look at art in Kenya, there is not a whole represented genre. So the government needs to collect, savor, and protect these arts so that they can be a testament to our past and a teacher for our future.

Perhaps an official could say that our own citizen’s are not interested in collecting our African art, so there is no economic market value for it and thus, it should not be pursued. But perhaps your citizens do not know about the arts availability. And even if they do know about it, perhaps the citizen does not value it because the government does not applaud it, thus giving the impression that our African art is not something to be revered, understood or important enough to become part of the common household.

You, the Kenya Government, have neglected this area of our culture. I do not despise you for it nor do I wish to put you down personally for it. I just want you to do something about it! I think there are so many other things you are dealing with, that Black African art just gets put aside. So I want to bring it to your attention today.

Mixed bloods, common hopes and struggles have created what has been developed as our Kenyan culture. We are a country of varied and diverse cultures ranging from the Arabic-Swahili culture at the coast, the pastoralists and herders culture, the Nilotes and Bantu in Western Kenya. Yet despite the differences and distance apart, a culture, our culture, emerges. There is unity in our concept of nation and nationality. It has been defined throughout time and merged in our liberation struggles. Even today, our modern day generation communicates and celebrates together like none before it, bringing us closer and defining us with a speed and strength like never before.

A rich culture we are. A diverse culture we are. But we have failed in bringing the higher powers in our government to reach out to us in this identity, this cause of being, this celebration. African Art is a common medium that would allow us to see our oneness, our past, our present, our future, and our beauty as a people and country...

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