Shine Tani, left whose works cost Sh300, 000-Sh700, 000
When Simon Njenga decided to ditch acrobatics for paint and brush, he
did not abandon the performing arts completely; he simply transferred it
to canvas. In his paintings human figures express themselves through
acrobatic moves.
Coming from Ngecha in Kiambu County, Njenga did not lack motivation to
make his switch. Ngecha is home to renowned visual artists with
interesting names like Wanyu Brush, Sane Wadu, Chain Muhandi, among
others. Soon he lost the name Simon Njenga and acquired a new one: Shine
Tani.
When he was an acrobat, people used to say he dressed like shetani
(satan) hence the brush name Shine Tani- who later moved to Banana on
the outskirts of Nairobi where he has been the director of Banana Hill
Art Studio since 1992.
With time, he abandoned his trademark acrobatic style of art to
experiment with other styles.
“Many of my fans have been asking why I stopped doing acrobatic
paintings so I decided to revisit the style,” explains Tani whose last
acrobatic painting exhibition was in France in 2000.
For six months – May to October – Tani relocated to a secluded area in
the Rift Valley where he set about working on a series of paintings,
which he titled Artist’s Acrobatic Moves. They are a series of 23
oil-on-canvas paintings currently being exhibited at the Banana Hill Art
Studio from November 9 through December 6.
Tani’s artworks (and prices range between Sh300,000 and Sh700,
000)feature mostly nude figures contorted in various acrobatic moves,
some not humanly possible.
Asked about his preference for nude and semi-nude images, Tani says,
“modern dressing in Africa is only as old as the colonial adventure.
Growing up I found my elder brothers wearing only a large shirt and
nothing underneath, and that is how they went to school.”
It would also appear that Tani’s artwork passes messages through shock
and awe. Such is the graphic nature of his paintings. The most
expressive piece features, among others, a woman sitting on a
traditional milking stool with a bucket between her legs. She is
‘milking’ a man’s genitalia. The man being ‘milked’ has his hands
cuffed. Another image in the painting has a man on raised ground with a
woman below him collecting his excrement using a bowl.
This painting is titled Mine is Best. Tani explains that the painting
features a man with two wives. “Whenever they meet they try to outdo
each other narrating how well they ‘serviced’ their man,” he says. Using
‘bold’ strokes of his brush Tani exposes the uneven nature of
polygamous marriages.
The other interesting piece is titled Transporting Love. In a classic
example of art imitating life, the artist has transposed news making
events to canvas.
In the recent past news pages have been awash with disturbing reports of
men and women engaging in sexual acts with animals. To Tani’s artistic
mind these people are simply transporting their ‘love’ from humans to
animals.
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