Dandora (Xala, Musicians)

In a paradoxical landscape where detritus cohabits with a wild nature, we are faced with an assembly of humans and animals. Traditional musicians, ragpickers, and livestock share an uncertain, very colourful space. This piece by Kenyan painter Michael Armitage depicts Dandora, the largest open-air dump in Nairobi, immediately around which almost one million people live. 
The term “Xala” refers to the novel and film by the Senegalese artist Ousmane Sembène about the corruption of the elites shortly after independence, a sequence of which inspired Armitage to paint these musicians. Painting on lubugo cloth made from the bark of a fig tree and traditionally used in funerals, the artist has anchored his canvas in the material and social reality of contemporary Kenya, without however forsaking his dialogue with the history of Western painting, from Francisco de Goya to Paul Gauguin by way of Gustave Courbet.