Shape-shifting SA creative makes his mark in Kenya

0 of 5

Nestled behind lush trees and cobblestone steps, red and black Masai pattern blankets are scattered around a secret garden in Nairobi, Kenya. In the heart of the city, the cacophony of bulldozers, cranes and clanging metal from surrounding construction sites fades away in this garden oasis as 25 creatives from SA, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Botswana get acquainted.

It’s a humid Wednesday morning when the contingent meets at Chez Sonia for the exclusive Google Africa Artists in Residency event.

The tech giant is hosting workshops and networking sessions dubbed the Alté Residency, in Nairobi for this unique group of artists, musicians, photographers and content creators. The two-day creative boot camp aims to celebrate these African “Alté” creatives.

The Alté movement, a derivative of the word alternative, started in Nigeria and is colloquially pronounced uhl-te. It’s a culture and concept that celebrates and champions individualistic and non-traditional forms of self-expression. With its roots in music, the movement has grown to include fashion, visual art and is now considered an overall lifestyle. 

South African makeup artist and content creator Rezah Sampson, 27, from Mitchells Plain, Cape Town is part of the group. Now based in Sea Point, where he works as a technician by day, Sampson started playing around with makeup three years ago.

“I was at a stage of my life where my creativity was being stifled and I needed a release. My best friend has always been into makeup. I was fascinated by the art-form through watching her blend colours, create shapes and even shape-shifting at times ... I thought, ‘This is art too, I can do this,’ and since then, my face has been my canvas and my creative outlet,” Sampson said.

In May he partnered with US icon Rihanna’s beauty brand Fenty for the launch of the brand in SA. In July he was nominated for the inaugural DStv Content Creator Awards in the beauty category.

But this isn’t his only creative outlet. Sampson is a trained musician and studied jazz and piano performance at the College of Music at UCT. Music is his first love and being in front of a piano is where Sampson is happiest, but for now the outspoken creative shape-shifting in the beauty space.

Being a queer man also has its own set of challenges for Sampson.

“A lot of beauty stakeholders expect overt femininity from a man in the makeup industry. That’s what seems to make sense, and it’s been interesting navigating that. I’ve always been about challenging the norm and breaking the status quo.

“I was teased and bullied a lot during my primary school and high school days for being ‘different’. It truly forced me to become somewhat introverted in my approach, so that I would draw less attention to myself,” Sampson said.

Jess Chibueze

Nigerian-American music curator, photographer and podcaster Jess Chibueze had just relocated to Lagos when the Alté movement took off. Born and raised in Virginia, US, to Nigerian parents, Chibueze, 29, first encountered the Alté movement in 2016. After graduating in the US, Chibueze returned to Lagos to join the National Youth Service Corps. During her service year at the NYSC she met Teni Zacheuus JR, known as TeeZee, a Nigerian alternative hip-hop artist regarded as one of the pioneers and leading faces of the Alté movement. 

“At this time Alte wasn’t even niche. I don’t know what is smaller than niche, but it was only TeeZee and some of his friends championing this thing. They came up with the word ‘Alté’ and they were saying this word casually to describe things and what people were doing,” Chibueze said. 

After her introduction to the movement she returned to the US, but her passion for her homeland remained and Chibueze returned to Lagos in December 2017. With no place to stay, $300 and three suitcases, she knew her “unorthodox” path would mean taking any jobs that came her way to make money. One of those was a hosting gig.

She hosted the second Nativeland music festival, an annual three-day event in Lagos that brings together thousands of young people from across West Africa and other parts of the continent to celebrate African culture. 

Chibueze went on to host artist listening sessions and started podcasting. From there she started curating playlists. This reignited her passion for photography datingback to her university days when she did missionary work in East Africa during summer holidays.

“I started photography when I was doing medical missionary work in Uganda; I stopped when I came back to Nigeria. In 2020, when I was doing a playlist called the Flexlist, I thought I needed to create more content to push my playlist. I would take pictures with my phone and use the images of the artists as playlist covers. That developed into doing the behind-the-scenes photographer where I would observe people on set,” Chibueze said.

Chibueze is carrying one of her signature handwoven hand fans in one hand, which she started collecting in 2019. When she first started her collection she only had two fans. To date she has 303 which she colour co-ordinates with her outfits.

“Colour co-ordinating my hand fans with my outfits started from something traumatic. I lost a lot of my clothes and I didn’t have the money to buy new ones, so I was trying to think of a way to be creative and maximise the clothes. I would colour co-ordinate the few clothes I had with the hand fans, they’re relatively inexpensive,” she explained.

Stopping herself from getting emotional, Chibueze says despite the latest brand ambassadorship for an international brand, the different challenges she’s had to overcome in her five years of living in Nigeria is her biggest achievement. More specifically, being a first-generation Nigerian American, opting to stay in Nigeria and not return to her family in the US, is something this trailblazer is most proud of.

“My biggest achievement is living and staying in Nigeria. I have gone through so much crap that has shaped me and caused me lots of trauma. When a lot of people with dual citizenship reach their breaking point, they move back to the countries they came from. When you leave Nigeria we call it Japa, but I haven’t left, no matter the traumatic experiences I’ve gone through, I’ve stayed,” Chibueze proudly said.

Anthony Mwangi

Later that evening at dinner, Anthony Mwangi leads us in a vibrant rendition of “happy birthday”. More impressive than his harmonies are the QR code stickers he’s been handing out at every new location.

When we meet for breakfast the next morning at the Villa Rosa Kempinksi Hotel, once again the musician, broadcaster and actor is armed with QR codes. With it being election season, every available billboard Nairobi is plastered with a politician’s face or campaign slogan. Mwangi, 36, knew he needed a creative way to promote his latest album, Welcome 2 My Soul. His previous tactics to promote his 2020 EP were stickers with fruit and slogans, but this time he decided he needed a different approach. 

“I told myself back then already that when I start working on my next album, I would come up with QR codes, that if you scan them, you get my music. So now when I go to the salon or a public restroom, or a restaurant, even when I meet a friend, I stick the QR code everywhere and I ask everyone they meet to also scan the code. I think that’s actually helped my album be the best-performing album in June in Kenya, because I’ve guerrilla-styled the marketing. My music is not mainstream so I have to find ways to make people consume the music and that’s how the idea of the QR codes came about,” Mwangi explained. 

At the age of 10 Mwangi, whose stage name is Anto Neo Soul, performed for former president Daniel Moi.

Born in Kawangware, it was this performance that made his teacher mom and banker dad realise their son was talented. His love for neo-soul music started in the early 2000s, when Channel O had just launched in Kenya. Mwangi would spend hours watching music videos by international artists such as Maxwell, D’Angelo, Erykah Badu and Jill Scott, the leading neo-soul artists of that time.

From singing in groups in high school and performing his own renditions of his favourite neo-soul artists, Mwangi went on to record his own music, headline the Bayimba Festival in Uganda and mentor young singers in a competition in Lagos.

“My upbringing wasn’t easy, but I now realise that I have some talent. I think music became my saving grace, because if you grew up where I did, you’d want something to escape too, and I’ve seen a lot of young people who’ve fallen by the wayside because of drugs and alcohol. So music is such a big part of my life, it gave me new opportunities to travel, to perform in churches and on platforms that most people would not get,” Mwangi says.

His latest album has been a four-year labour of love, which he candidly admits has been a physically, emotionally and financially draining process. Despite feeling anxious about releasing an album during the election period, Mwangi did it anyway. Being an independent artist, the singer and radio broadcaster has been aggressively promoting his album on social media and not just relying on his QR codes. 

He’s come a long way since harmonising to Oh Happy Day from Sister Act and being invited to perform for the now late Archbishop of Kenya, Maurice Michael Otunga.

Vinette Shimekha

On every corner and narrow side-street there are fruit and vegetable kiosks colloquially known as a kibanda. These look different to the pink and neon green-coloured installation that set designer Vinette Shimekha, 28, made for the two-day event.

Growing up in Nairobi she would walk to school and pass several “mama mbogas” — loosely translates to “mama vegetable”. On the 3km walk she’d stock up on some of her favourite treats such as roasted maize or chilli mango. After high school Shimekha relocated to Johannesburg with her father, a banker, where she studied marketing and business management.

“After moving to SA and getting used to the mall experience, such as Sandton, Fourways or Cedar Square, it was so developed compared with what I was used to. But when I came back and saw the developments happening in my country, I asked myself what is really setting us apart, what will make someone go to SA and what will make someone come to Kenya? When development happens in Kenya, they demolished the vibanda. A few people will try to build their kiosk slightly on the side, but those will just get demolished again,” Shimekha said.

This growing concern for the kibanda culture and the future of the mama mbogas has seen Shimekha build several of these kiosks for events, music videos and the latest one for Google Africa. Set designing is something that she only started in 2021, after a New Year’s resolution to have more fun.

When Shimekha returned to Nairobi after graduating in SA, she had a mental breakdown in 2017. Her mental health started affecting her physical wellbeing.

She was no longer excited and everyday tasks like taking a shower and brushing her teeth left her feeling numb. She reached a breaking point when she washed her hair and it felt lifeless. She went to the barber and cut off all her hair. After the haircut she started doing research into hair care, skincare and overall health and wellness. This self-discovery gave birth to Nurture Organics her beauty and wellness company. Shimekha would design sets for the product photoshoots and the mental health events she hosted, which slowly unlocked her creativity and confidence as a set designer.

“It took me a long time to see my creativity. I only started exploring that in 2021. I studied art in high school, but I failed miserably. At my school, they always used to make us draw faces and everyone’s drawings of faces got exhibited all over the school, except mine. So I felt that I didn’t have a place in art for a long time and eventually I accepted that maybe I’m not creative,” Shimekha said.

As she watches people pose inside her kibanda installation, she smiles. For this young businesswoman the kibanda is what makes Kenya unique and instead of being replaced by high-rise buildings and malls, it should be preserved.

For Google Africa’s head of communications Dorothy Ooko, the movement may have its roots in Nigeria, but its branches have spread to all corners of the continent. Having successfully brought these creatives together for this three-day cultural exchange, Ooko aptly said “this is really about how Africa is defining and redefining art”.