Gakunju kaigwa biography channel

Agthe, Johanna. "Religion in contemporary East African art," Journal of religion in Africa (Leiden) 24 (4): 375-388, 1994. illus., bibliog. BL2400.J86 AFA.

Artistic perception of home: Maison française de Nairobi—Kenya, 16th March-15th April 2002 / by Jean-Michel Kasbarian. Suilly-la-Tour, France: Findakly, 2002. 110pp. illus. (color). N7397.6.K4A78 2003 AFA. OCLC 646075785.

Della Rosa, Annelise. The art of recycling in Kenya. Milano: Charta, 2008. 127pp. illus. (color), bibl. refs. Text in English and Italian. N6494.T73D45 2008 AFA. OCLC 2625110

Gakunju Kaigwa is a Kenyan sculptor with a Master’s degree in Public Art from the University of Dundee in Scotland. Although he began his career painting, Kaigwa discovered his real passion in the early ‘80s as a sculptor. He works with wood, glass, steel, resin, bronze and many other materials, using each medium to express different ideas and forms. Most of Kaigwa’s sculptures are figurative and envision the human body. He likes to portray the human condition, and in some of his works you can easily detect a “commentary” note; the works are not meant to be critical but are intended to evoke thought and emotion from the viewer. Kaigwa’s work may be found installed in a number of public spaces around Kenya and internationally. He has a studio at Kuona Trust Art Centre in Nairobi, and doubles as a thespian and a musician.

Q: Where did your journey into Art begin?

I was fortunate to go to good schools. 

Somehow, the teachers saw a talent in me at the time. People often ask me, when did you start making art? It really is something that started from a very young age. At the time I wasn’t thinking consciously about it but I had very supportive teachers all through my time at  Hospital Hill Primary School which I attended from 1964 to 1970. Thereafter I went to Lenana School, which again had a very strong art programme. I was taught by a lady who joined the same year I was in Form One called Themina Kaderbhai, with whom we are still friends to this day. She taught me art for six years, and I did well enough to qualify to go to Kenyatta University – Kenyatta College as it was known then – in 1977. 

I started the fine art programme, which at the time  had to be done under the Bachelor of  Education (Fine Art). They were actually training teachers, not artists. It was the only place where you could do art other than the University of Nairobi, which had Design and Architecture. I was more interested in

The Kaigwas are an artistic family. The patriarch, Mark Kaigwa, was a story teller and one-time deputy mayor of Nairobi. His wife Perpetua Wamuyu Kaigwa was a mimic while two of their four children are famous artists; one in theatre, television and film, the other in the world of sculpture and what’s more... their paternal grandma was a versatile traditional dancer!

Mark Wambugu Kaigwa: The Deputy Mayor of Nairobi for three years to 1965 owned Kaigwa General Stores in Makadara estate in Nairobi’s Eastlands. It was the first miro shop to have a kerosene pump in the area besides a neon light that attracted onlookers at night fall. Mark Kaigwa’s fortunes changed, and so he shifted houses from Makadara, Ofafa Maringo and finally Garden Estate off Thika Road as he got embroiled in council politics and his wife in business.

Mumbi Kaigwa: South Africa’s CEO magazine awarded her the 2015 Lifetime Achievement award for being Africa’s “most influential woman in the arts and culture.”

Staging Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues got her the 2003 Eve Woman of the Year (Arts and Culture) award, befitting for the alumnus of Limuru Girls’ School, Kenya High, UoN (BA, French and Arabic) and USIU (MSc. Management). Mumbi left the UN after a decade in 1998 to follow her heart for the arts, and meandered through North Africa, Asia and Europe, besides acting in Neighbours, the Australian television series aired by KTN in the 1990s and, among other films, The Constant Gardener.

Before her marriage went south, the mother of Mo and William (named after William Shakespeare no less) was married to theatre director Keith Pearson.

Gakunju Kaigwa: Billy, an alumnus of Kenyatta University (Fine Arts ) holds a Masters’ in Public Art from Scotland’s University of Dundee. The versatile sculptor has portrayed the human body using wood, steel, stone resin, glass and bronze with his

THE GENIUS OF CHANGING JUNK INTO FINE ART

Kioko Mwitiki may not be the first scrap metal sculptor in East Africa. He gives that credit to Ugandan artists.

Kioko also had his own political problems during the 1980s. “I was a recipient of the same ‘walking papers’ that many student activists got in the post-1982 (attempted coup) period,” confessed the one-time Pambana protester.

“There were 70 of us that got kicked out in March of 1985,” recalls Kioko who is still rather proud to have been featured on a front page photo of The Standard that time, when anti-Moi sentiments were very high.

Frankly needing a job once he was out of school, Kioko found his way to the Nakuru Aluminium Works.

“That was where I learned welding,” says the man who has taught that same skill to countless school-leavers, many of whom have gone on to become self-supporting sculptors who, in turn train their own apprentices.

“One is in Mtwapa where he’s trained a small nucleus of scrap metal sculptors who are doin