CYSK# 23: April Kamunde
Visual Artist
Vipi.
I have been thinking about trends. This morning in the coffee shop, eighty per cent of the women were in barrel jeans. In African art, I would argue that pop art has been one of the more dominant recent trends. And there are some incredible artists working in that particular genre. But as with books and food, I generally like to mix things up, so when I come across a creative doing something familiar and yet wholly original, I get very excited. This week’s Creative You Should Know is a stunningly talented self-taught visual artist from Nairobi: April Kamunde. I have spent a lot of time looking at her images, which focus on women at rest. April describes herself as an artist who paints her feelings. She has the ability to pull you in with her brushstrokes, making you want to look closer. Her work has the same intimacy and contemplative qualities as Billie Zangewa (CYSK #14) and Ayotunde Ojo (CYSK #18). I feel I know the women on her canvas.
When did you first realise that you were good at painting?
Art and Design was one of the subjects I took up in high school, and I was introduced to oil pastels. In primary school, it was just watercolours and pencil work. So there were all these different mediums, and people were painting or creating artwork with nail polish. And I was like, “Wait, you can, you can do that?!” An aunt of mine who was visiting to get her hair done by my mom saw me doing my art homework, and she was just like, “You’re actually good. One day, do something for me, and I’ll pay you.” I looked at her skeptically and asked, “Ah, are you sure?” I did a portrait, which I copied off of one of these Africana coffee table books, and I used oil pastels. I was obsessed with them. She really liked it. She took it to one of the places where she takes her artwork to be framed, and she got it valued. It was valued at 3,000 Kenyan shillings, which is about $30 USD, and that was my first paycheck. And I was like, “Wait, seriously, I can do this. Are you for real?” Since then, between her and her husband, within the next seven years, they commissioned like ten or eleven works.
That’s lovely. They must have the biggest collection of your work.
There’s someone who just overtook them recently, but they were my first collectors. They’d host friends and family or have dinner parties. They’d always invite me. They’d walk around the house and tell their friends, “This is by my niece.” It was amazing. They helped me get through school. Through them, I would get follow-on commissions. I owe a lot of my artistic journey to them. Shout out to Aunty Mary and Uncle Peter!
You are getting all these referrals through the university, and then you begin working full-time. What happens to your art?
I was mostly getting portrait commissions. It’s something I kept in my back pocket. At uni I studied biochemistry. My dream was to pursue cosmetic chemistry. Art was just a tool in my skill set to navigate life. But even when I got my first job (in finance), my entrepreneurial skills kicked in. I would always look for managers egotistical enough to commission works of their own, so mostly the men! I would put together my portfolio and slide it over their tables. I got a couple of commissions there and then, but again, at this time, I was not really taking art seriously.
But it was clear that you were talented. People are commissioning you, so what is stopping you from taking it seriously?
I think that because of the influences around me, painting practice or artistic practice was not a viable career choice. There were no examples of people who were earning a living through painting practice. I’d see people selling touristy art, but I didn’t have access to people who were actually building a fine art practice. When I was choosing a degree program to pursue in high school, before locking in on pursuing cosmetic chemistry or biochemistry, I thought if I were to pursue an artistic career, the most reasonable prospect would be a graphic designer. You can see the use of a graphic designer in your day-to-day but not so much for a fine artist. My dad came up with a very clever argument when I was at the crossroads of choosing between those two things. He said, You’re already selling your work right now. You’re already turning that into money. Because, of course, an African parent is like, How are you getting paid? How are you going to buy food? Practical matters. He said you’re lucky in the sense that you have these two strengths. If you pursue just art alone, or graphic design, or whatever, your sciences will die. But if you continue with the sciences, you can also continue with the arts, since you’re already making money from it. I thought, fair, I can’t argue with that. It kind of worked out; these painting commissions are what kept me afloat and kept me in school.
What made you decide to finally go full time with your painting?
It was in 2020, the Covid pandemic, the great equaliser. Everyone was finding themselves pivoting careers and whatnot. But even before Covid, I kept on changing jobs. When I finally got into the cosmetic scene, it kicked my butt; like I quit within eight months. I couldn’t believe how much of a misfit I was for that industry. I had to quit and go home to recalibrate. During Covid, when everything was upside down, there was a bit of quiet, and I was still working on my commissions. There was, like, an aha moment there when I thought, “Oh my gosh, if I could find a way to do this for a living, I would be so happy”. I had done so many things, I was so exhausted. It was as if my art said to me, “I was your backup all these years. You’re ready because I’ve been waiting.” I started thinking what it looks like to be a full-time artist in this hectic Nairobi. I began having conversations with the one professional artist I knew at the time and an art dealer. So the conversation was, ‘Why should I not quit my job?’ I’m also a very logical person. Don’t sell me dreams. I need practical steps.
You mentioned experiencing fatigue and that is one of the themes that runs through your work which often show women at rest in nature. Do you trace that directly back to your own exhaustion?
Yes! When I found myself in the situation where I wanted to do this full-time, I panicked because I knew commissions would only get me so far. I can’t rely on commissions too much, because I get bored really fast. So I asked myself, what is April’s original voice? What’s my artistic voice outside of painting commissions? The commissions are great because they taught me technical skills, so I’m very good with colour. I mastered my oil paints without actually going to school for that. But what do I have to say? If I were a singer, I’m a talented singer, but with the commissions, I was doing cover songs. But what would be my original song?
How did you come to find that original voice?
I said I need to produce work from me but I have no idea what it is I have to say, I attended an exhibit by Wambui Wamae Kamiru, a Kenyan installation artist. Her exhibition broke my brain open and gave me the idea of what my voice is. It was titled Akili Ni Nywele it revolved around the politics of our hair from colonial impositions to our beauty standards. It was so powerful to me because I had grown up in my mom’s salons and was trying to work in the cosmetic sector, and I found it so problematic there. It felt like she had literally gone into my brain and walked straight into the corridor or the closet of core memory. She went through the files and created an installation exhibition. It was so beautiful, it was so powerful, I was so emotional. From Wambui’s show, I said ok, so this body of work needs to be something personal. It needs to be something that I’m not necessarily giving answers to, and I think the question I want to explore is why I’m so tired.
I couldn’t answer that question. I’d be like I’ve worked a lot. I’ve changed jobs a lot, but that doesn’t make me so different from a lot of my colleagues, all of my friends. When I had an open studio in Kampala to show some of the works in progress women got it really fast. They just saw the work and they got it right away. The men? I needed to explain it to them a little bit more.
The Dera features very prominently in your work. Why that particular garment?
When I started using the dera in the images, I needed to explain even less than before. There’s an added emotional tie to the work. To me, the dera is a non-verbal, do-not-disturb sign.
I love the idea of this dress being a do-not-disturb sign - a garment of rest and leisure!
When you see a woman in a dera, just leave her until she has changed (out of it), then you can address her after that!
How did people respond to your work?
There was a lot of resonance. But sometimes you would get that question of “Why are you so tired? You don’t have children, you’re not married….”
Arrrghhh what does that have to do with anything? How irritating!
There weren’t that many responses like that but there were a few. I just said you don’t have to receive the work. Then there are the voices that said “I feel this exact thing or I know how this moment feels”. I started painting the experiences of my friends because I realised it’s a collective fatigue. I think a lot of us are also feeling it. Maybe it’s because of the stage in our lives. I’m in my late 30s. A lot of my friends are also in their late 30s, early 40s. At around this age, for those who are married, you’re also navigating children, and now it’s multiple children, and then you’re navigating the fact that our parents are aging, and now we are the adults, and so there’s additional caregiving where you’re now, you’re a parent to your very young babies, but you’re also a parent to your parents. And suppose you’re navigating a career, you’re moving into more senior positions. The world is different. The world we are navigating is not the world our parents navigated in terms of the pressures, the social expectations, even the gadgets and the information overload. A lot of the muses I paint are close friends and family. I tap into their stories as well.
Do you ever get stuck creatively?
I have been exploring this topic of rest since 2021. That’s a solid three years. Towards the end of last year, I started getting the feeling that I had excavated all the things that I could excavate as far as rest was concerned; I looked at it from multiple angles. And I started panicking about what to do next. I had a solo show coming up this year, so the panic was real!
My psyche and state of being had moved away from that grey cloud of fatigue, because of many things including my artistic career stabilising, so I’m not worried about money all the time. I’m excited about the career, about the work, so I’m not as tired as I was before. So I can’t keep working on work relating to rest. I was kind of stumped. So, I took a break from doing full-figure paintings, and reduced the size of the canvas that I was working on. I started doing these feet paintings where it’s just the figure’s feet. I was challenging myself to see if I can still evoke emotion when I’m not relying on facial features or body posture to communicate, so it was just the feet or waist down. When I stepped away from some of the feet paintings, there was a sensuality coming out of the work. I thought, “Ah, okay, is this where the work has to go?” I wasn’t ready to let go of the dera, and I couldn’t articulate why. I wondered if I could draw a straight line between the dera and sensuality, the same way I was able to do with the dera and rest? In the coastal areas, the dera is a very sensual gown. It’s our version of lingerie, in the sense that, yes, it’s a covering dress, but it frames your curves. It is very enticing. It’s like you’re, you’re covered, but you’re not covered. It is just very sensual.
The way it falls it sometimes hints at your shape, but it’s not tight…
Exactly! I started reading a little bit more, desktop research, even conversations with friends of mine. Some of these articles that I came across, which I love, are interviews with men, particularly from the coast, who said I buy the dera specifically for my wife because there are no zips. There are no buttons. I’m not fighting with elastic. I was thinking about where we got the dera from - Somalia and Yemen. In those regions it’s so hot there and the dera is light and airy, allowing for air circulation, but then it’s also Sharia compliant, because it’s not form fitting. It was interesting this contradiction between modesty and sensuality. It unlocked my creative block of now where to go next to the work. So I think I just doubled down on the dera. Now those contradictions are what I’m currently exploring.
Do you consider yourself a successful artist?
Yes and no, Yes in the sense that I’m happy that I can pay my rent and I can address my financial obligations. I’m very proud of that and very grateful that I can live off my work. That’s a huge part of what I consider success. I’d like to cement even more financial stability. I hope that more opportunities open up, not just for me, but for other artists, so that it’s easier for more people to jump onto this path and for their journey down this path to be shorter than mine.
How do you rest?
I rest in many ways. One way I rest is by being in my house. I watch TV a lot when I’m trying to unplug (Chef’s Table, Peaky Blinders, Drive to Survive – Formula One). I rest when I am with my girlfriends. Time with my girlfriends is very important for my mental health. I really love doing gallery trips, mostly when I’m alone or with one or two people. I especially enjoy it when the galleries are empty. That really fills my cup.
You can follow April here and her gallery here.
If you are in Kampala, go see her exhibit. It runs until 8 November. Details can be found here.
Finally, a throwback: me and my dera Kariba circa 2022. Thanks, Aisha!
Thanks for sharing this interview. Love how supportive Alice’s aunt and uncle were. Isn’t it wonderful that a garment can communicate so much, I think every Kenyan woman can identify herself and resonate with the pieces.
New sub cuz I gotta know the back story :)