In the Studio: Kenyan artist Wangari Mathenge

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2024

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Wangari Mathenge used to be a high-flying corporate lawyer before turning to her first love of art. She likes to express herself through her colourful palette, large-scale figurative paintings and immersive installations of places she has lived and worked. For this In The Studio, arts journalist Anna Bailey follows Wangari as she creates her next immersive experience, a life-sized replica of her Nairobi studio, where she invited 20 female domestic workers to have a day of rest, while also painting them for a new series of work which looks at the plight of female domestic workers in Kenya. Wangari also invites listeners into her Chicago studio, where she working on the next painting in the series. But as Anna finds out, rest is not only important to the workers but to Wangari herself. Presenter and producer Anna Bailey Executive producer Andrea Kidd.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service, the program that gets
0:08.2	inside the minds of some of the world's most creative people.
0:11.8	An idea comes. You start to play around with it. It then
0:15.2	becomes this installation. Now that I've done one, it sort of has legs. That's the
0:21.0	Nairobi-born Chicago-based artist Wangari Mothengi.
0:25.0	Four years ago she was a high-flying corporate lawyer.
0:28.0	Now she's an artist commanding six-figure sums,
0:31.0	cited as a hot talent to watch around the globe.
0:35.0	She's known for her colourful palette and figurative paintings
0:38.0	exploring her African culture, identity and also her past
0:42.0	and now she's creating her second installation.
0:45.0	We're always constantly trying to work out things that you hadn't quite resolved in the past
0:50.0	and so it becomes a part of your practice and I think for me that's what installation is
0:55.4	constantly looking at interior spaces immersing an audience into the situation that you were in and immerse the audience in my experience.
1:07.0	I'm Anna Bailey and I'm following Wangari as she makes her next immersive exhibition at the Pippa Horsworth Gallery in London and creates
1:15.0	paintings for her ongoing series called A Day of Rest which puts female domestic
1:19.9	workers in Kenya into the heart of her campuses.
1:23.0	I've just always had a soft spot for domestic workers.
1:27.0	They work so hard and are almost invisible.
1:29.0	Thinking about when do they get time off and who celebrates domestic workers.
1:36.3	Hi Wangari, I'm Anna, lovely to meet you.
1:38.4	Hi, Anna, how are you?
	...

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