Blasphemy at the wrong gallery

The power of art to shock and surprise remains undiminished.

Our example to hand is a current show in Nairobi called Sex and the City.

Considering the title, the sex was a given. A little nervousness on the part of the organisers might have been expected, a frisson of excitement too. For here was an exhibition sure to attract the crowds — art lovers and the curious alike.

What the Alliance Francaise as the hosts probably hoped for was a hall full of good, innocent fun. Hints of winks, nods and the suggestion of a bit of romping here and there.

METAPHORS FOR THE ELITE

One of the artists was Thom Oganga with his scenes of the city’s nightlife. His figures drink, lounge around and engage each other in a twilight world of loud music, clanking bottles and swirls of cigarette smoke.

Another of the artists was Michael Soi. He made his name with series of brightly coloured paintings showing Les Girls, wide-eyed but in control, permitting a grope here and there.

His paintings can be read as metaphors for the elite class trying — and failing — to exploit the wananchi represented by his perky girls, yet superficially these are scenes of general naughtiness, men on the prowl, girls with their willing victims; good enough to raise a knowing chuckle from anyone.

But what the Alliance got in Nairobi was rather more than sex with Soi sauce. It also got blasphemy.

For the third artist in this exhibition was John Kamicha, a man who has spent a good part of his 39 years raising questions about his own spirituality and, more broadly, about organised religion; in particular Christianity, the faith in which he was raised.

Of late, Kamicha has moved away from mainly figurative paintings incorporating bits of kangas and instead has used his scissors for photo-collage.

He admires Richard Hamilton, the father of pop art, and Wangeci Mutu, the Kenyan artist now based in New York, who made her name through collage. He respects too the work of his good friend Richard Kimathi who, a couple of years ago, produced a series of paintings of heads in which the eyes and mouths were cut-out magazine photos of well known models.

In riffing on these examples, Kamicha produced some 23 collages for the Alliance exhibition. Some showed street girls under arrest, some showed the more vibrant aspects of the city’s night life, while three of them dealt with religion; a Last Supper, one picture called Hail Mary and another of Christ, called Sex Retreat.

BLASPHEMY!!

The Last Supper showed Christ as a female fashion model, his masculinity and that of his Disciples restored with scribbled beards. The broadminded organisers were apparently comfortable with that.

Hail Mary showed the Blessed Virgin with a picture of Wangari Maathai emblazoned on her breast… the BVM goes green to save the world. The Alliance was OK with that one too.

It was in Sex Retreat that they felt blasphemy lay. Alors!

For one very small part of that picture showed Jesus having sex on the Cross. The central image was a devotional image of Christ in Majesty, right arm raised, blessing the viewer.

Sex Retreat was Kamicha’s comment on recent revelations that groups of clergymen had been going on retreats ostensibly for religious studies, but had been devoting themselves to more earthly delights.

From the standpoints of colour and composition, Sex Retreat was rather a beautiful work but that was besides the point. For, in content, it was one image too far. The Alliance’s collective liberalism fought a losing battle against its legal and moral obligations — and the picture was removed from the show.

This, I feel, should not be seen as one artist pushing his luck, or being denied the opportunity to make a point he sincerely believed to be valid. Nor should it be seen as a fearful management imploding at the thought of repercussions either from the law or a vengeful religious group. I see it instead as a small part of the glorious, ongoing struggle between serious art and the society that supports it.

It is an artist’s job to be rowdy, to try to push back the boundaries, to explore and interpret new territories. And from time to time, authority reacts badly, throwing their work out of exhibitions, and sometimes banning it altogether.

Stylistically, the Impressionists spring to mind with their attempts to capture light, and the Fauves with their wild use of colour: Politically, most of the Jewish painters of the mid 20th century who fell foul of the Nazis and their deranged theories of racial purity.

Sometimes artists are so far ahead of public taste that their work is best left in the studio until the world catches up. But with religion, as opposed to style or politics, we are all on tricky ground.

Some people regard their faith as immutable; it is an everlasting and universal truth and cannot change. And so its followers can never catch up.

MISPLACED ART

Kamicha’s picture would have caused gratuitous offence to a great many people; not art lovers who would have understood the need to dance a little side step now and then, but to ordinary, decent people — including committed Christians — who just wanted to spend a little time, maybe with their children, having a look at some pictures.

Quite simply, Sex Retreat was in the wrong place. An avant garde gallery, yes; the ground floor of a place devoted to promoting a foreign culture and building friendships for France, no.

So I fully understand why the Alliance took it down — in spite of my instincts, which are for no censorship at all, trusting instead to people’s common sense.

Of course I could be wrong about this. I have been spectacularly wrong before. I remember airily telling my friends in 1975 that Britain would never elect a woman as Prime Minister. Then bang on cue, enter Margaret Thatcher. Stage right.

The article first appeared in The East African.