In the Studio: Mika Obanda

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mika Obanda is a Kenyan artist who creates vibrant and personal mosaics using egg shells sourced from local hotels. Cleaning, drying and colouring them, before painstakingly placing each individual tiny piece onto his canvases. Frenny Jowi visits him in his studio in the Nairobi slum of Mukuru as he works on his latest collection. It is a series called Trying to Blossom, in which he often places himself at the centre of his art works, showing not only his own journey as an artist and a person, but also as an activist, reflecting spirituality, love and the wider issues facing himself and his community.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service. I am Franny Joey,
0:06.1	and today we are in the company of the Kenyan artist Mika Obanda.
0:20.0	His mosaics portrayed the issues facing many in Kenya,
0:23.6	but they also have a surprising twist.
0:26.4	They're not created using traditional tiles,
0:28.7	but from items that many of us throw away.
0:33.8	Egg shells.
0:35.3	Egg shells can do art, not only beautiful art, but deep and very meaningful art.
0:41.8	For the past six years, he's been using this delicate shells,
0:45.7	painstakingly placing the tiny pieces to create his vibrant, personal and activist artworks.
0:52.9	When I'm using an exhal actually, I'm exploring color.
0:55.6	Mosaic, I feel it's very personal to me.
0:57.7	It made me find peace in the moment that I couldn't find peace.
1:00.6	Maker lives and works in Mukuru, a slum area in the south of Nairobi.
1:05.4	Now, about 60% of the capital's population live in slams.
1:09.9	And Maker's artworks often depicts the experiences
1:12.8	faced by the 700,000 people who call Mukuru home.
1:20.3	So Mukuru, it's crowded.
1:25.7	When we were driving along, we saw a lot of waste dumped on the road.
1:32.3	It can be a difficult place to thrive in.
1:36.0	Does that inform a big part of who you are and what inspires your artwork?
1:40.7	Mukuru inspires my work a lot.
	...

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