Art Space Key Defence Zone For Liberties

On May 17^th, just a day before the opening of an exhibition themed around this year’s 18^th May celebrations of International Museum Day, MUSEUMS AND CONTESTED HISTORIES: Saying the unspeakable in museums, the National Museum of Kenya censored art work by 3 leading Kenyan visual artists.

The censor alleged that the work had to be pulled down for being ‘too graphic for children’

The three artists, Michael Soi, Patrick Mukabi and Joseph Bertiers and a group of others had been encouraged by the show’s curator to make works as per the theme only to be told one day before the exhibition that their works could not be shown at the Museum space.

This censorial action now adds the National Museum of Kenya to the list of state agencies that have a disputatious relationship with the creative sector after the Kenya Films and Classification Board (KFCB) was forced to recall a draconian legislation it had drafted to regulate the sector in November 2016.

In an interview with the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme, Dr. Mzalendo Kibunjia, Director-General of the National Museums of Kenya, claimed that the museum disapproved of the censored artworks to protect visiting children from such content.

Banned - This painting by Michael Soi. PHOTO | FRANK WHALLEY

Those opposed to the move have questioned why the museum could not arrange to have a classification of the works to be displayed as a way of regulating the audience that would access work that had radical or adult content.

There has been no response from the museum regarding this proposition.

The increase in censorial currents particularly targeting artists is a manifestation of the shrinking civic space in Kenya and the region. Art can be used to highlight insufficiencies in governance and popular notions of morality in a more vivid manner through visual, installation, and audio works that target certain individuals or society in general.

One of the censored pieces that had been used in the show’s promotional material illustrates through cartoony figures, a man dressed in a religious habit and the other in a suit kissing and fondling each other.

It is a work of art that casts aspersions at the integrity of the church and hints at its complicity in the general moral decadence of the state as an institution.

All the same, regulation of artistic content has to abide by the constitution and international standards. Under Article 33(b), the constitution of Kenya explicitly guarantees the freedom of artistic creativity and goes ahead in part (d) to explicate the impermissible forms of speech.

International standards are clear that limitations based on ‘public morals’ must not be applied in a discriminatory fashion and must meet the three part test of legality, legitimacy, and necessity.

State agitations for the adoption of a creative content regulation legal framework were frustrated last year by defragmented opposition from the creative sector when a draconian draft review of the Films and Stage Play Act Cap 222 was rejected by the sector.

In the prevailing policy lacuna with regard to regulation of creative content, censorship will manifest through spatial regulation of artistic speech. In the shrunk civic space, artists will have fewer state controlled spaces where they can practice or show their work. 

This will reduce the visibility of artwork in easily accessible public spaces as artists will now retreat to private exhibition venues which are still generally inaccessible to all because of their elitist character.

Essentially, the regulation of locations where artists can show their works is the surrogate for the regulation of content. All these denigrate the role and appreciation of arts in society.

In recent years, the Kenya Films and Classifications Board (KFCB) has harangued Kenyans with moralist and overzealous statements on regulation of creative content.  This latest act of censorship has to be analyzed in the context of that repetitive admonition of overcritical content especially in online spaces.

The National Museum, gallery spaces, and other spaces where art is housed and exhibited ought to be sensitized that unconstitutional censorship has a chilling effect on the freedom of artistic expression in the country.

In Tanzania’s much declined freedom of expression space, there have been arrests and detainments of artists. In March 2017, popular rapper Neyo Wa Mitego was arrested and detained briefly for criticizing the president’s dictatorial style of leadership in his song. Others who have undergone harassment at the hands of police and other state agents are Roma Mkatoliki in 2017 and Vitali Maembe in 2016 who was arrested for leading a protest calling for accountability and transparency in spending at an art school in Tanzania.

Such actions are meant to denigrate the role of artists in society even as they remain a critical voice in the region’s civic space by increasingly call out the leadership’s misdeeds.

On the other hand, KFCB should expedite the revision of the Films and Stage Plays Act (Cap 222) to reflect conformity to Kenya’s international obligations on speech regulation.