TRACES : 2 PRINTMAKERS IN NAIROBI

Traces is a one of a kind exhibition by two master print makers, Wcycliffe Opondo and Anki Kallstrom who have redefined and challenged our understanding of the age long technique. Anki’s work is an output of a two month residency programme at Kuona Trust during which she taught a workshop and had an exhibition dubbed ‘Discoveries Within’. Wycliffe is an artist currently based at Kuona Trust.

Read the artists’ biographies below.

Ann-Kristin Källström

Born 1958 in Stockholm, Swedish artist Ann-Kristin Källström has had exhibitions in Sweden, Germany, Italy, USA a o. Recently, she has spent a 2 months recidency at Kuona Trust Art Centre, Nairobi where she gave a serie of printmaking workhops and made several researchs with found objects letting her to improvise  and produce prints from the locally available resources. Through her walks, Ann-Kristin started to collect objects in the streets of Nairobi that captured her imagination and curiosity and created prints using the shape, volume and forms of these found/garbage objects.

The result of these experimentation is exceptionnal. These delicate and exquisite prints using the intaglio printmaking technique whith fabric from the Toi market (Kibera) tells us something about where we live and who we are. They are infinite marks of everyday objects inscribed in the past, they are in their fragility and mortality indirect traces of our beings.

Anki facilitating a workshop during her residency at Kuona

WYCLIFFE OPONDO

Wycliffe is a self-taught artist from Nairobi. He participated in a number of exhibitions, workshops and exchanges including Sweden. For the past several years, he has been learning and using various printing techniques and became one the most skilled Kenyan artist in this field.

The images shown here are inspired by the period when the artist lived and worked in Kibera. The railway was his favorite since it symbolizes the irony of straight parallel lines cutting right through the organized chaos that makes up the slum of Kibera. These refined works shown at Le Rustique capture the environment of the people within Kibera in a very subtle way. A place that, despite many challenges, has its concealed beauty.

One of the print works done by Wycliffe Opondo

 The exhibition is showing at the Lerustique restaurant till the 20th of October 2013