30.08.1986–10.2020
Kawira Mwirichia
Kawira Mwirichia (1986–2020) of Kenya set out to make kangas for all 196 countries of the world, each based on the struggle for LGBT rights in a particular country. Her project “To Revolutionary Type Love” was shown in Nairobi, Braunschweig and Bayreuth. She also worked as a curator, painted, drew and made sculpture.
Biography
A kanga is an East African cotton cloth printed with a saying in Swahili. Among other uses, it is spread on the ground at a wedding to receive the bride and lead her to the ceremony. Kawira Mwirichia made this cloth the basis of the main project of her life.
She was born on 30 August 1986 and lived in Athi River, Kenya. Her first degree was not in art: from August 2007 to December 2012 she studied at the University of Nairobi and received a Bachelor of Civil Engineering. Through the Astraea Commslab programme she took a course in online LGBTQI activism. She gained professional skills in graphic and web design on courses at the Institute of Advanced Technology and the Nairobi Institute of Business Studies. She began exhibiting before the kanga project. In 2010 she took part in the See Us Hear Us Art Festival at Liberty Hall in Pangani, Nairobi, and in the Changing Faces Changing Spaces conference at the Hilton Hotel. In 2011 she showed work in the Girl Art Project at the GoDown Arts Centre in Nairobi. In 2015 she took part in the exhibition “Jinsiangu’s Bodies Unbound” at the British Institute in Eastern Africa.
The idea of “To Revolutionary Type Love” was to create kangas for all 196 countries. The design of each is tied to historical episodes in that country’s struggle for LGBT rights. She knew the context at first hand: as of 2017, 37 of Africa’s 57 countries criminalised homosexual acts. Speaking of art in Nairobi, she said that there are two scenes there. The first is the Masai market, with its traditional crafts and tribal customs; the second is contemporary art, where people experiment with other forms of expression. In her words, the project creates a dialogue between them: traditional cloth becomes a material of contemporary art. It was shown at the Goethe Institute in Nairobi (May 2017), at the University of Art HBK in Braunschweig, Germany (June 2018) and at Iwaleawahaus at Bayreuth University (30 June to 30 September 2018). In November 2017 she took part in the exhibition “27” at Shifteye Studios in Nairobi, hosted by the National Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission. The project’s exhibitions also included work by other artists.
Besides the kangas, she painted, drew, made sculpture and worked as a curator. She also made a ten-page colouring book, “Lez Ka-lour!: A Lesbian KamaSutra Colouring Book”.
She died in October 2020. According to some accounts, she was buried in November of that year.
Profile notes