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Over the past few weeks there has been some controversy in Nairobi surrounding a group of young Kenyan graffiti artists. The said youth have been tagging Nairobi street walls with powerfully scripted murals of political undertones.
Street graffiti as you may or may not know, is in fact illegal. It is an offence, classed as defacing of public property. For this reason, most graffiti artists choose to remain anonymous and choose to use their works as their identity. Not Boniface Mwangi. He is a photographer involved in the graffiti movement and he chose to come out publicly in support of the movement.
See more of that here:
Graffiti has for a long time been associated with lawlessness, gang culture and general negativity. We at KIAFRIKA believe in and support Boniface Mwangi and his team in their bid to stand up against political oppression in Kenya through delivering these powerful messages. We more so love that they are positively using graffiti art as a means to peacefully and effectively portray their message, changing the nature and perception of both street art and social/political and public interaction.
In light of all this, we leave you with a few questions to ponder on:
1.Considering the state laws and the nature the graffiti movement, what is your take on Boniface Mwangi's decision to come out with his identity?
2. Does the spirit of the movement lose some of its power because of this? In other words, does the anonymity of the movement make it more powerful? Is it possible that because Mr. Mwangi has now somewhat taken "responsibility", the public's communal interest in taking a stand is somehow diminished?
3. What is freedom of expression if there are lines drawn as to where, how and when it should be done?
Something to think about...
N.B The nature and purpose of our questions are to trigger critical thinking and do not imply or represent the views of the KIAFRIKA team members.
My name is Boniface Mwangi,a Photo-activist and part of the team working on the graffiti. When we came up with the graffiti idea we wanted to do them anonymously. We made a big mistake during our first mural when one of the artistes came with a reporter to the site. Within the 48 hours after doing that first mural an article appeared online and l was mentioned as part of the team. We appealed to the writer to delete the story but she declined. A week later l received a call that a prominent vulture wanted to meet us and we declined. The vulture also sent an emissary to our office asking if he could pay us a visit officially and we refused. We discussed internally and we realised the only way we could continue doing the graffiti's is to let the public know why we are doing it and seek their support. We gave NTV exclusive access to our team because we had already been compromised and there was a bit of intimidation from the vultures. As the NTV interview revealed this is the beginning and what we have done so far is "Soft". Without Kenyans support the work we are doing will be at risk because vultures have the monopoly of violence in this country. I wont reveal much but graffiti is just one tool we are using to ensure the vultures reign comes to an end. As we continue debating the merits of us going public lets not forget our goal remains Kicking the vultures out of power. My voice,My Vote,Our future,its time for a Ballot Revolution!
ReplyDeleteHello! We are glad to hear from you! More so, we appreciate that you took the time out to properly define what the situation is surrounding the graffiti and how you came to be at the forefront of this movement! We are so glad to see Kenyan youth taking action,thinking critically and taking the chance to be as brave as you and your team have been doing over the past few months. We at KIAFRIKA can confidently say that we are ready for this Revolution, doing our part in coming through with a different kind of revolution that will one day be beneficial to present and future Kenyan and African youth. We wish you all the best!
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