“I would not say I became an artist; I was born an artist,” declares Sane Wadu in a video commissioned to mark the opening of his landmark retrospective exhibition, I Hope So: Sane Wadu, in Nairobi. Wadu’s work fell off the radar and was only exhibited intermittently at now-defunct commercial galleries across the country until the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute (NCAI) decided to mount an exhibition covering the artist’s work from 1984 to date. The show also happens to be NCAI’s first and is a bold undertaking for a nonprofit art space still in its infancy.
NCAI’s commitment to the “growth and preservation” of East African contemporary art is ambitious and expansive. At the January opening of I Hope So, artist Michael Armitage— the driving force behind the gallery’s creation—remarked on the “extraordinary accomplishment” the event represented, alluding to the tangible impact the space already has had on Nairobi’s artistic community and to the mammoth task of bringing the space and the exhibition into fruition. The decision to locate NCAI in a half-occupied shopping mall in the city’s outer suburbs was not an obvious one, but it speaks to the mission of the space as well as the dynamics of Nairobi’s mercurial property market and urban planning regime, which favors oversupplying malls and shoebox apartments at the expense of cultural production. Thus, the vision of NCAI is one of intent rather than form—its location is secondary to the societal function it serves by simply existing.
The gallery is in the incongruously named Rosslyn Riviera, a neighborhood mall with an air of managed neglect. The mall borders Nairobi’s diplomatic zone, which is characterized by embassy compounds and standalone homes encircled with barbed wire, electric fences, and ominous-looking private security vehicles. Further along is the former sleepy agricultural village of Ruaka, an area that now houses Nairobi’s growing middle class. The former rural roads are crowded with apartments built in seemingly random fashion; many of them at real risk of collapse. NCAI therefore sits at a unique nexus of speculative real estate, making it part of the city’s present condition and future; it leverages the miscalculations of the “free market” to create spaces of beauty and creative potential.
NCAI’s location also subverts the logic of urban development. Located on the top floor of the Riviera, it’s hidden within a warren of interchangeable shopfronts: beauty spas that never open, a closed Mexican taqueria, a micro cinema that is up for sale, and a private clinic. Instead of being aspirational, the journey through the mall is grounded with a very palpable sense of failure. The social function of shopping malls, like offices, only works if there are people; otherwise, the sequence of long corridors begins to feel absurd. In an unexpected moment of rapture, NCAI’s existence in the middle of failure signals that another mode of cultural production can exist within absurdity. This is a bold statement of the workings of the city as we see now, and how we hope to see it one day.
There is an inherent challenge in converting a store into a modern art gallery. Undesirable floor plates limited natural light and an obscure location within the mall brought up fundamental questions on how far retrofitting could go in solving the inherent design challenges. David Adjaye and his wife, Ashley Shaw- Scott, friends of NCAI, offered their design services on a visit to Nairobi. (Adjaye Associates later provided detailed plans.) Adjaye, in the characteristic fashion of an architect who is also in touch with the practice of art making, deftly sketched an elegant sequence of three interconnecting galleries, a library alcove, and a reception area. Out of sight, a kitchen, office, and storage rooms sit squarely within the plan. This move sectioned off an unwieldy floor plan and dramatically increased the wall space for hanging art.
Adjaye also took advantage of the double-height ceilings, which remain unfinished and open to the steel trusses that support the roof and the exposed silver insulation, removing NCAI aesthetically from the world of retail to the now-familiar industrial look we’ve come to expect from contemporary art galleries. The gallery is finished with a polished concrete floor, difficult-to-execute shadow gap details (the contractor had never seen one), and rendered white walls reminiscent of the raw potential of Adjaye’s earlier work, including London’s Rivington Place and installations at the White Cube.
Despite its severity, the space came together in a flurry of favors and minor project setbacks characteristic of the city. Nairobi still lacks professional art movers, so it took a small fleet of retrofitted trucks used to transport flowers to move Wadu’s paintings from his studio to the home of Armitage’s parents for storage and then for hanging at NCAI. Meanwhile, a global supply chain hiccup held up the delivery of the gallery’s specially commissioned lighting system for over a year. It is therefore poignant that the opening of NCAI, two years late, was met with joy and astonished optimism that may not have been possible prepandemic.
The gallery’s format works well for NCAI’s inaugural exhibition. Curated by Mukami Kuria, I Hope So is hung sympathetically and with a genuine understanding not just of Wadu’s cultural importance but also of the storytelling power his vividly colored and largely allegorical paintings possess. It’s a promise of NCAI’s future programming, which will eventually expand to include sculpture, video installations, and performance art.
NCAI joins a new generation of artist-driven contemporary art spaces, such as Ibrahim Mahama’s expansive Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art outside Tamale, Ghana, and the Nubuke Foundation, also in Ghana, whose bold architecture of raw concrete and extrusions seeks to connect art and society through architecture. NCAI sits with interesting company and comes at a critical juncture in the development of art spaces across Africa.
Beyond its location at the edge of Nairobi’s diplomatic zone, and its mandate to critically engage with contemporary art, a question lingers on how far a physical art space can go in catalyzing transformation. A hint of this potential was recently seen when NCAI virtually convened a panel of three Kenyan artists working in sculpture, Chelenge Van Rampelberg, Wangechi Mutu, and Dame Magdalene Odundo. The discussion underscored the importance of intergenerational dialogue in modeling artistic practice for a new generation of artists. Alongside public programs, NCAI will host Nairobi’s first contemporary art library and eventually develop an interdisciplinary fine arts program that will draw a global mix of art students to Nairobi, providing a home for those who, like Wadu, believe they were born to be artists.