Mika Obanda: Mosaic art
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Welcome to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service. I am Franny Joey. Last summer, I met the Kenyan artist Mika Obanda at his studio in the slums of Nairobi, where I saw the mosaics and drawings he was finishing off for an exhibition. He's been through a lot since then. I want to tell you about the challenges he's faced and how that has affected his work. But first, here's a reminder of the artwork he was making, with a surprising twist. His mosaics are not created using traditional tiles, but from something most of us throw away. Eggshells.
Eggshells can do art. Deep, very meaningful art.
For the past six years, he's been using these delicate shells, painstakingly placing the tiny pieces to create his vibrant, personal and activist artworks.
When I'm using these shells, I'm exploring color. Mosaic, I feel it's very personal to me. It made me find peace in the moment that I couldn't find peace.
Mika lives and works in Mukuru, a slum area in the south of Nairobi. Now, about 60% of the capital's population live in slums. And Mika's artworks often depict the experiences faced by the 700,000 people who call Mukuru home. It's crowded. It can be a difficult place to thrive in.
Mukuru inspires my work a lot. Like 90% of what I do is like inspired from here. When I speak about what I've gone through, all this is affecting me. That's what comes out in my work.
So I'm just taking a walk to Mika's studio in Mukuru. There are so many shops and children coming back from school, open-air markets. Hello, Mika.
Hello, Franny. How have you been?
I'm good.
Yeah, I'm happy to have you here, and I would like to show you the studio.
All right, let's go then. So all of your neighbors here, these are like their family houses and your studio is the only house in this area that's like an office or a workplace?
Yeah. This is my studio. This is where I create my work. It's a very hot space.
Yes, I'm sweating right now.
Yes.
This entire room is made of iron sheet. And because this room doesn't have a window, Mika's created sort of a window on the ceiling made from... Transparent sheets, I think. On my left-hand side are sketches and the bucket of eggshells.
Yeah, the bucket of eggshells. This is where I collect them and put them after they've dried. I put them here.
I can see some of the eggshells which you've already prepared are painted pink, purple, yellow, red, all sorts of colors.
Yes, before even starting to cut them, I usually paint them using acrylics with a very thick layer of paint. And then I mix it with wood glue to make it more stronger. So these are like my palettes.
Mika's using these palettes to create his latest artworks, a series of mosaics called Trying to Blossom, in which he's putting himself at the centre of his works.
I've started with the first testers, which are going to give me a ground for the whole series. And then I make the pieces, the mosaics, very big artworks.
What unique materials does Mika Obanda use for his mosaics?
Do you have any reasons for choosing that particular theme?
Yeah, because I've grown in the slums here in Mukuru, Koroben. I'm trying to show, trying to blossom in the midst of all these hardships, growing in the slum, police brutality, the government misusing funds which are supposed to help people in a particular state or in a particular area. All those things, I want to address them, but now in a very creative way that is consumable by everyone. I want to go deep into the challenges that they face, trying to see that artist, everything that affects him as a Kenyan, as an Afrikaner.
You scribbled some notes here, trying to blossom distribution plan one. The self-education and research overlooking my younger self, I can believe you'll watch this flourish. I love that. And you're sketching in chalk.
Yeah, and what I'm doing currently is just small pieces, like just a test of waters on how far this series can go.
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