“Everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
Oscar Wilde
Art Direction
INTERSECTION
Before we begin, we would like for all our mindsets to be on the page that Mental Health is the holistic/complete state of physical, emotional, spiritual and social well-being and not just the mere presence or absence of mental illness. With this in mind, this direction will focus on the intersection between sex, and religion, private and public spaces, the virtual world, protection, rites of passage and mental health and all the other variables that show up in our lives.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, power is defined as the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events.
This direction is all about the different kinds of power dynamics that affect our sexual interactions and the nuance and grey often left out of the above-mentioned subtopics.
Sex is not as simplistic as penis-vagina penetration and sexuality is not as straightforward as heteronormativity. These three letters S...E...X, tuck away a world of grey. The black and white nature of our sex education fails to capture the crucial subtleties that shape how, who, where, and when we have sex.
This direction is all about the different kinds of power dynamics that affect our sexual interactions and the nuance and grey often left out of the above-mentioned subtopics.
Sex is not as simplistic as penis-vagina penetration and sexuality is not as straightforward as heteronormativity. These three letters S...E...X, tuck away a world of grey. The black and white nature of our sex education fails to capture the crucial subtleties that shape how, who, where, and when we have sex.
Sex is all about the grey; the interaction of self, fragility, mind, uncertainty, gender, sexuality, imagination, energy, desire, need, power, creativity, pleasure and is permanently fluctuating.
So who gets to decide what kind of sex is acceptable/good (and under what condition), who are the sluts/pimps/perverts and who are the saints/virgins/prudes?
For this conversation we want to focus on the complex intersecting nature of our lives with sex.
Some of the topics we explored in this series of work is body politics, sex work, contraception, sex and religion, SOGIE, sexual violence, heterosexual sex amongst others.
I worked with 7 photographers to create this series.
Between 2016 and 2020, my team and I put together a project on sex in modern-day Kenya. We loved working on it and the efforts we put into it. We conducted a research paper to inform us on which direction to take and organized a series of events. Our outputs included a lookbook, Prosexsive dialogue events, and two installations. The first installation was curated by Sara Skoglund (photographed above) and featured some amazing creatives showcasing their work alongside her contemporary dance piece. It included performances by Vivi Karia, Lusi Mbiria, Imelda, and Lorenzo Roccegiani.
In 2019, I curated the lookbook and worked with seven photographers: Lusi Mbiria, Marvin Muriithi, Kevin Mwachiro, Paul Munene, Sylvia Gichia, Jeri Furaha, Faith Wanjala, Lorenzo Roccegiani, and Constantin Kirezi. We created the lookbook to be published by a Belgian publisher in Europe, as the type of work within the book could not be printed locally. However, when we submitted the material, they cited that "the images were not African enough." I am not sure what "African sex" looks like, despite being African, so we didn't end up publishing it. However, I think we have it available on Amazon. We took our L, and created an installation as the final piece of this work. The installation featured the photographs (of course), a sex aunt, a male and female stripper, and a gynecologist, all of whom were part of the installation. For safety reason I am not able to upload the book herein but here are some of the photos from the event.
