ARTIST SPOTLIGHT : SAVIOUR JUMA
Saviour Juma is a Kenyan Contemporary Artist, muralist, artist mentor, and founder of the Sun Valley Collective, an artist collective by teenagers based in Kibera, where he was born and raised. Juma uses vibrant color and geometric patterning in AfroLove portraits to re-present the colorfulness and beauty of his slum.
The artist specializes in both acrylic painting and recycled collaging, using repurposed cans from his neighborhood to make art. He launched into his professional artist journey in 2009, when he was fourteen years old, and began collecting used cans as a material for his work in 2014. His emphasis of recycled materials in visual arts is a brilliant engagement between his surroundings and his creative process, as well as an inspiring response to his heart for environmentalism and community building.
“Juma uses vibrant color and geometric patterning in AfroLove portraits to re-present the colorfulness and beauty of his slum."
In the series pictured below, with titles ‘Mama Samaki’ (left), and ‘Face of Destiny’ (right), Juma uses the fish to symbolize a mothers provision and labors of love. Her son takes what she had and uses it for their future. The youths vision of futurity is symbolized in his spectacles with a blue sky painted in them - his vision is bright, clear, and sky high. The green glow of the fish in ‘Face of Destiny’ speaks to the youth who add their own brilliance to what is given to them, to honor what was given for them, an intergenerational symbiosis. The use of gold-tinted aluminum cans tightly nailed together in a patchwork speaks of the wealth of love which flows through tight-knit community of Kibera.
“Mama Samaki” (left), and “Face of Destiny” (right)
I had the pleasure of meeting with Juma at his shared studio in Olympic, Nairobi, where he spoke about his creative process when working with aluminum cans. Juma dances at the intersections of collaging, metalwork, and painting. He collects the cans, burns them, cuts them into pieces for use, then nails them down with a hammer. The burning stage both sanitizes them and creates a colorful luster. He experiments with the malleable aluminum to create texture, and advantages its earthy sheens and branding by choosing complimentary colors in his paints.
Juma also shared about the Sun Valley Collective of artists and their programs for empowering young Kenyan artists.
