Syowia Kyambi
MFA Programme Leader
Syowia Kyambi is the facilitator of the Masters in Fine Arts program at the Transart Institute, accredited by Liverpool John Moores University. She is also a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg as part of the visiting artist program for the 2023- 2025 cycle. Kyambi co-founded Untethered Magic established in 2019 which focuses on supporting the process for research based conceptual contemporary arts in Nairobi. She builds networks and facilitates exchange in support of research and process-based practices. Kyambi is particularity interested in knowledge building through the merger of different disciplines. Often bringing together different age groups, areas of study as well as merging artists with creatives in the field of humanities and sciences. In her practice Kyambi examines how our contemporary human experience is influenced by constructed histories, creating installations that include a performative process to narrate stories and activate objects, exploring cultural identities, linking them to issues of loss, memory, race, and gender. She represented Kenya in the La Biennale di Venezia in 2022. Her works include a permanent commission ‘Infinity: Flashes of the Past’ Nairobi National Museum (2007). She is the recipient of the Centre for Art Design & Social Research fellowship (2018-2020), the UniArts Helsinki fellowship (2018), the Smithsonian Artist Research fellowship (2017) and the Art in Global Health grant from the Wellcome Trust Fund, United Kingdom (2013). Artist residencies include PRAKSIS, Norway (2019), Delfina Foundation, UK (2016) and IASPIS, Sweden (2013). Her work is held in a number of collections including the Kouvola Art Museum, Finland, and the Sindika Dokolo Foundation.
Praxis Statement:
The connection between the psyche, history and the entanglement that exists within non-stagnant identities is ever present in my creative process. I am always pushing beyond simple categorisation looking for acknowledgement and healing. As the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn says, “…resistance means opposite to being invaded, occupied, assaulted and destroyed by the system. The purpose of resistance here is to seek true healing of yourself in order to be able to see clearly…where the conditions are such that they can heal themselves and recover their wholeness.”
I look for refuge by building upon my use of language and methodologies to navigate the terrain of the globalised postcolonial post-industrial affects in my daily life. Creating interventions is a new approach in my practice to generate dialogue and highlight alternative narratives within the existing narratives around identity, colonialism and power structures. My practice engages with issues of race, perception, gender and memory. I examine how our contemporary human experience is influenced by constructed histories, creating installations that often include a performative practice to narrate stories and activate objects, exploring cultural identities, linking them to issues of loss, memory, race, and gender.
Incorporating photography, video, drawing, sound, sculpture and performance installation my approach takes aim at the politics of the time as well as its legacy today. What is remembered, what is archived, and how we see the world anew. I engage with museums and/or ethnographic collections, personal and public archives, bridging disciplines together and visually interrogating our histories, the representation of identity, the affects on the psyche and the nuances in our relationships to each other and the world we live in.
My work is messy, complex and uneasy and asks the viewer to bear witness to the hidden histories embodied in my work. The embodiment of collective experiences, and constant search for links between the now and the morphed now. I reveal the complex framework of prejudices that are based on Western romanticising of my context, East Africa and simultaneously explore the richness of my artistic self-reflexivity and ability to transform performatively. My installations eloquently blend apparently disparate ingredients together. Without interfering or directing the viewer too much, I allow my audiences to watch these different ingredients react in front of their eyes. History collapses into the contemporary through various objects and sounds including mythical characters that simultaneously embody mischief, disruption and hurt. I open my gullet like a pelican and try to digest the intangible. Rooted in my practice is a deep connection to land, earth and home.
More information:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdIXrl9yqiQ&t=47s
https://vimeo.com/178614332
https://vimeo.com/227531188
https://vimeo.com/121893728
https://vimeo.com/133441181