Projects
A cultural organisation that is defining skate culture in Kenya through zines, playlists, films and gatherings.
The Jehovas are an electronic duo from Nairobi. Their music is ancient lore from the forest. A sonic ritual to rekindle multispecies communication and evoke more-than-human joy. The duo, V for 5 (she/her) and Gek0 (she/they), are multidisciplinary artists who met while attending Santuri Electronic Music Academy in 2022. Their work so far as The Jehovas has included the release of their singles, Dream One and Breath of Fire, the later having a music video which was developed as part of their involvement in the Postnatural Independent Programme in 2023. Alongside working on their debut album Love Created Death, The Jehovas host a pirate radio station called the[R.V.E.R]. Embedded with lore of fantasy and science fiction, the[R.V.E.R] brings its listeners to a sonic world where frequency eaters chomp up radio waves, giving abrupt endings to the[R.V.E.R]’s radio transmissions. Most recently, The Jehovas took part in the Kilele Summit where they curated a sound installation of the[R.V.E.R]'s broadcasts so far. This was accompanied by a zine on frequency eaters.
Side Projects
A series of ableton tutorials for beginner producers. I decided to start making tutorials as a practice of challenging the algorithm and creating the representation of African female producers that I wanted to see.
A series of soft HTML tutorials where I give access to web building platforms and digital gardens as well as share some observations from my journey as an artist.
Exhibitions
The Body and The Self was an exhibition at Munyu that run from the 15th of June to the 11th of July by painter and skateboarder The Mute Poet. His work commented on the forms the body takes as it relates to other bodies and relates to itself. As part of the opening, V for 5 and The Mute Poet performed an hour and a half long performance on a bed, elaborating on the messages conveyed in The Mute Poet's paintings through their bodily postures.
Indigenous spiritual practices believe that the deceased spend their afterlife on the earth. The land is a resting place for those who came before us, if the resources we use to build our technologies are obtained from the land, then technology is a resting place for the departed. Ancestral Technologies is an installation and public programme which navigates the liminal spaces between past, present, and future, weaving together threads of ancestral wisdom with contemporary digital tools. It honours the interconnectedness of the spirit world with the land and recognises the responsibility of stewarding the digital realm as a sacred extension of this connection. Through a series of curated artworks, web-pieces, video installations, and a participatory public curriculum on web-building, technology is viewed as a conduit for expressing collective wisdom, narratives, and dreams. This exhibition fosters digital sovereignty through understanding the symbiotic relationship between humans, technology, spirit and the natural world.
Speaking
In this online book launch for C&'s 'Living Archive' publication, I developed the webisite 'mto' for use as an exercise on digital rest. I shared my connection to the living archive through my art practice, participating in a larger discussion with Cholita Chic, Ethel-Ruth Tawe and Russel Hlongwane.
During this workshop I shared how being online could be an expression of our inner poetry. I touched on the topic of Digital Gardens and suggested some tips on taming the algorithm. We concluded by making poetry password zines, which helped us rethink what poetry and cyber protection can look like.
Writing
A colourful 8 art page zine on transitions
An abstract of the post-natural landscape my collaborator and I are building through our music.
An artistic response to Adam's book Vitu Vya Sanaa.
A brief essay on the more-than-human life existing on a land that has changed severely.
A review of C&'s reading room and a select few books which reside there.
Conversation with Sharon Neema on the themes of religion, lineage and post-coloniality raised in my zine CHACH and poem "Raised by Good Christian Woman"
A zine on lineage, inheritance and religious trauma.
A conversation with L.Akinyi about their poem, 'four winds/every breath'.
A 3 act play set in heaven's waiting room.
a poem about the sensations and memories that are stored in the present moment.
A poetry and art zine created with Sharon Neema.
Work Experience
Education
Rethinking Kenyan Theory and Aesthetics In Literature and Visual Art was a 4 week workshop where artists studied Kerry James Marshall and made zines which defined Kenyan aesthetics, movements and artists.
Nnawiri Fellowship is a week-long programme where women and non-binary creative artists from various disciplines will be invited to come together and co-create. During this multidisciplinary fellowship, artists created zines that explored the effects of economic policies on their communities and the effects of the political economy on their everyday lives.
A website is a poem that is already in everyone's pocket, a house built from photos of other houses, a book where every chapter is another book where every chapter is another book. In this class we will be studying the poetics of the web: the raw material of HTML, the systemic visuals of CSS, the endless interactive possibilities of Javascript and the browsers, servers, protocols, and infrastructure that holds it all together.
An experimental education platform that explored the implications of postnature as a framework for contemporary creation. While taking part, I developed the album concept for my collaborative music project, The Jehovas.
Santuri Electronic Music Academy (SEMA) is a dedicated program that offers deejaying and music production courses. SEMA blends progressive pedagogy with an innovative curriculum that gives as much space to traditional music practices as to contemporary experimental processes.