Kamande wa Gature

Residing within the John Michael Kohler Arts Center are 405 drawings by Kamande wa Gature – perhaps Kenya’s first documented artist of animal-themed artworks. The vast range of cultural heritage on display renders his work a fitting introduction to Kamande’s 7-decade existence. Growing up at a time when Kenya’s indigenous land was under settler control in the wake of a colonial invasion, most of Kamande’s life unfolded in a settler’s land.

As a young boy crippled by running sores, he met Karen Blixen, a settler of Danish origin who owned a coffee farm in what is today’s Nairobi suburb and residential area, Karen. Through Blixen’s intervention, Kamande would be successfully treated by doctors at the “Scotch” Christian Mission near her farm. And Upon healing, Kamande became Blixen’s cook at the farm. It’s here that his engagement with fine art would manifest.

In many of his drawings, the Agikuyu life and the wildlife jungle intersect with fables he heard working alongside his tribespeople in the Karen Coffee farm. Using crayon and coloured pencils, he would create artworks that reflected his direct environment in a grotesque and surrealistic style. Interestingly, the theme and style his work entailed went on to have a seminal influence on the surrealist artist Kivuthi Mbuno.

Storytelling was at the centre of Kamande’s life at the coffee farm, a status very much in tune with his Agikuyu traditions into which he was born. Echoing the artist’s skill at storytelling, Karen Blixen published Kamande’s recollections and stories alongside other episodes of her life in Africa in her classic memoir, “Out of Africa”. 

Also entailed in Kamante’s association with settlers, was his employment at the Hog ranch, an estate owned by Peter Beard, the 20th century American photographer fascinated by African wildlife and women. Nourished by the constellation of stories told by Kamande, Peter Beard would also publish a book entitled Longing For Darkness: Kamante’s Tales from Out of Africa.

However, in an interview conducted by a Kenyan journalist in 1977, Kamande conveyed substantial dissatisfaction with Beard:

”Talking about that book brings such pain in my heart that it eats me up like a disease,” he said. “The man whose idea it was that I should write this book seems to have been the one who has benefited from it. I have never seen a 50-cent piece from that book.”

It’s at the Hog Ranch where Kamande would spend the rest of his life with his family until his death in 1985. May his soul continue resting in peace. Kamande’s artwork lives on at Kohler Arts Centre and his portfolio extends to the illustrations featured in “Longing for Darkness” and several of Peter Beard’s photographs.  While Kamande’s tales continue to live on in books written by his white masters, less recognised are his animal-themed drawings and paintings – only within Koller’s walls can they be revealed.

Ultimately, in sharing his discontent with Beard during his late stages of life, Kamande evokes the often overlooked exploitative aspects of his colonial masters. And in focussing on his quality of life, his story also nets a deeply relatable post-colonial theme – the derogatory term of the starving artist. Finally, if his practice serves as chronicles of Kenyan fine art history, his work suggested an attempt at self-narration that was deeply cultural. Long may his stories live.