From struggling student to international art guru

I have been in the US for almost 20 years. Art was not my career choice per se. Art to me was so natural and enjoyable that I did not see it as something you do professionally. Professions are things you have to do — you have to get up, put on a suit, and go to work.

This changed when I did my international baccalaureate (IB) at Wales on a scholarship. I had a phenomenally inspiring art teacher, Martin. He helped us realise that art was not about technical expertise or drawing a prettier picture than the other person; it was about expressing yourself and devoting yourself to your craft.

When I completed my IB, I already knew I could not do a desk job. I felt as if I would die. I came home and worked at McCann Erickson Advertising in Nairobi.

It was good because that stint sealed the coffin on my career as a designer. I could not stand having someone tell me to change my work, or do this and that differently. I think my temperament has helped me to stay away from what I know I cannot bear to do.

Resourcefulness and reinterpretation

I went to study fine art at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City, which is a full scholarship school. For the remaining fees and my upkeep, I worked three jobs.

It was insanity! But I was ambitious and I loved what I was doing. I believed that it was going to work but I could not have told you how. I just put my blinders on and went for it.

Of course I felt everything — sometimes intimidated, sometimes defeated, sometimes lost, and often very poor. But mostly I felt that this thing gave me so much joy and I knew that if I did something good with it, I would be unstoppable.

To be able to do something I absolutely love every single day meant that I would work harder than I ever could for any business or employer.

I was also teaching art to young children in after-school programmes. It paid very little, and during those years I was literally living below the poverty line.

I remember one year a friend who was helping me to calculate my taxes was in total shock at my earnings. “How do you manage to live on this? How do you eat!” I had mastered the ability to make art out of next to nothing and to take discarded items and transform them.

Being raised in a poor economy, resourcefulness and reinterpretation is a massive part of our culture. 

After I graduated with my BFA, I worked as a manager for the Soho Guide publication. It was a full-time “grown-up” job with all the trimmings. I was able to pay my rent and all my bills on time and buy things I had always seen but could never afford.

But in spite of these material comforts and brief financial security, it did not allow me the time or the mental space to create my art. I was finally living well in NYC, but I could not stomach not making art just so that I can earn a salary. 

The only way to really push myself was to go for my masters, to really hone my practice and understand exactly how I was going to manifest myself to the outer world. I chose a school that would challenge me, one that would have the international name value and recognition.

I was accepted at Yale University, where I earned a full tuition scholarship. Yet I still had to work three jobs on campus — one at the chemistry lab, another in the fund-raising office, and as a teaching assistant. Yale was a tough experience for me. I would describe it as a very elite boot camp. 

Culturally, it felt very euro-centric. So you felt that there was an acceptance to your intelligence and ideas, but with those of us from other languages of thought, it was a fight.

I was a student having to defend my history, my background, and my cultural identity and ironically I was there to learn from these same people.

After I completed my MFA, I got a little two-bedroom apartment in NYC. I turned my bedroom into my studio and filled the walls with large works. I drew and painted and read obsessively. A couple of years later, there was a definite interest in my work from the public. 

The works I am most known for are female creature characters dealing with identity, loss, empowerment, and multiple personas. Curators would visit and I would explain to them that these drawings were just my “lab”, sketches that allowed me to think, but my serious works were future large installations.

I soon realised that they were interested in my “lab work”, so I stopped trying to downplay it.

This work was revealing — the things I loved and the things that were also very shameful and despised about women. The way we denigrate and dehumanise the female body was collapsed together with how we respect and love it. We are not able to separate our prejudices from our loves.

Breaking out of poverty

A few collectors began to buy my work. Initially, I undersold everything. I would calculate the cost of my materials, my time, and something extra for profit. I was very misinformed. You learn by making many dumb mistakes. There are so many vultures in the art world. 

By 2003, the tide had turned and I sold a painting for five figures. My work continued to sell and to be featured in galleries, publications, and museums around the world.

These included the Guggenheim, Saatchi Gallery, and the Harlem Museum. What it boils down to is that someone was willing to invest in my ideas. It was such a relief to be able to exist above the poverty line. It does change your sense of dignity and your humanity when you are not constantly struggling.

It was a little scary because a lot of the teaching I had received in art school was anti-market. “Never focus on the galleries or on trying to sell your work.” But I had tasted poverty and had had trouble affording a place to live, so it was not an intellectual discussion for me.

I felt that if you make really interesting things, there is nothing that dignifies them more than a collector who can afford to adopt them, live with them, and take care of them.

Feel very fortunate

If I was never able to sell my work, I would be frustrated but I would not stop creating art. I make my work for my own compulsion first. To me, drawing is really about extracting and expunging all these ideas, these nightmares and dreams.

I feel that I am one of the very lucky individuals who have somehow been able to take these lovely, weird things and find people who want to hang them up in their homes. 

As for being an artist, it really was not a choice for me. I probably would have become sick if I did not create somehow. I feel deeply that artists are a necessary part of culture. Art has a soul — a therapeutic space. Art is unique and powerful and should be most revered and valued. 

Even when I am out with friends or family or doing something else, my mind is still creating. That is what is beautiful about being an artist — you never stop doing it. You do not stop being a doctor just because nobody is sick.

It is a vocation, a calling, an internal practice. I never lack inspiration; I have always had a lot of ideas and before I had a family, I would work till exhaustion. There is something pushing your body and mind so far that you are just useless to everything but your art.

Art is very organic and very female — it is like labouring. When you are giving birth, there is pain and you have to persist to get your child out. The gods do not just throw these ideas at you from the heavens; you are a vessel to transmit them but you have to put in the effort.

Once you realise that it is why you were put on earth, you understand that you just have to do it. It is a certain type of madness that is in your DNA and only a special few have it.

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A taste of Wangeci

Favourite destination: Cyprus. It was not only astonishingly beautiful and rustic and warm during the month of December, it was one of those places in the world where it occurred to me that a specific type of ethnic/land/border problem is such a pervasive condition of our time and the feelings that simmered when Cyprus was severed in half were still alive.

It was powerful to see this issue played out in this seemingly idyllic little country and to sense the depth and breadth of these feelings.

Pets: I have one pet — a Russian Blue (cat). She is the most kind, gentle, girlie cat I have ever had. She loves my mother, who does not like her as much, and she can barely stand my daughter, who works tirelessly to be loved by her.

Her name is Booda because she was very fat and gentle and shy and mysteriously hid from me only to emerge deep in the night when she thought I was asleep.

What music is currently in your playlist? Buika, Nina Simone, Tricky, Santigold, Bjork, Baloji, Fela, JustABand, Skunk Anansie, Martha Argerich, Meklit Hedero, Sigur Ros, Jason Moran.

Four people you would love to have for tea: Frida Khalo, Dedan Kimathi, Gandhi, and Harriet Tubman.

What would you say to your 20-year-old self? Coming from a place where we rarely say this, I would first say, you are a terrific young human being. Be compassionate with yourself, stay close to your mentor or any older, wise person whom you feel is caring and trustworthy.

You would be surprised how many life altering mistakes you can make with one bad decision. Do not keep friends who are not wonderful to you. 

Favourite colour: I have no favourite or least favourite colour. I am a visual person ... it would be like asking a musician what their favourite note is.