Kuona Arts Trust Centre welcomed its year of activities last Thursday with Labyrinth, an installation art exhibition by mixed-media artist Jackie Karuti (pictured). Last year Jackie also held a successful exhibition that portrayed the fate of books and Kenyan libraries.
Her works are mostly influenced by life, gender, identity and urban culture. In this particular exhibition, she is moved by the complexities of life and the urge to lead themselves out of it.
Installation art is a three-dimensional medium of artistry, temporary or permanent, that gives the idea of space. Forms of media such as video, sound and performance can be used together with other genres of visual artistry. Labyrinth is a continuous patterned-structure that has twist-and-turn routes jumbled up that is difficult to spot its start, end, and where to lead oneself out of it. As true to the title and her genre of art, Jackie successfully took the audience in that maze as well as showing her subjects in her works going through the same maze. She has employed the repeated mixed-media pieces and sound and video installation art to pass her message across.
In her video installation titled Lost in Trans(mission), Jackie is seen behind bars, writing a letter whose words are unreadable. The video screen shows Jackie standing and writing the letter. The video keeps repeating the same images again and again, and both the audience and the subject remain stuck into the same cycle.
Upon entry into the gallery, we are stuck in a labyrinth of our own. Her works depict wooden-framed drawings and paintings of inmates hanging on the walls. All the works show the inmates in their cells standing and the only difference between one artwork and the next was the colouring to separate one cell from another and in some, the separation was by the frame itself. Other than that, there is not much difference. The prisoners are going about the same activities of standing and doing nothing else. We take a tour across the wall and we reach a door written ‘exit’ on it. When we open, we find a mirror and hits us back with a reflection of ourselves. We go on and on, viewing the works and then back to the mirror.
“Labyrinth explores the banality of life by use of repetition. It reflects a bored consistency with an implied journey to an unknown destination, borne out of being stuck in the same place, doing the same thing,” explains Jackie.
She further expounds: “It is all a process of getting out of the labyrinth but when you open the door to get out, there is a mirror. You find yourself stuck in that same situation over and over again and you wonder what the reality is.”
She describes labyrinth as a depressing life that people find themselves in with nothing different to do and with the urge to escape from it. She informs us that there is an exit in her installation art and that two prisoners have found their way out of the labyrinth. All we need is a keen eye to see that.
“It is about self-imprisonment. It is about living in a society that does not let you be who you are. A lot of people do not know that their life is a prison. They are living a life that is repeated and there is hardly a way out. It is a part of humanity, something that people can relate to. We find a way out through death but that is sad. There are other ways who leave that kind of life and there are others who want to stay in it,” she says.
Labyrinth is a follow-up series to her previous works dubbed A Great Perhaps which she exhibited in South Africa while on her residency last year. The exhibition runs till February 6.
