2017 Maktaba ya Sanaa, a Library for the Arts in Lamu, Kenya
February 2017 I presented a mini library at the Art Festival Lamu 2017. I carried a small bookcase with 20 books and DVD's, all donations from artists who worked in Lamu and from my own library. As a painter who worked out in the streets on this Kenyan island, I was asked more than once to teach my craft to young local who wanted to be artists. After organizing workshops I thought long and hard about this request. As an art student I regarded the library as my number one teacher, wouldn't it be a good idea to provide young artists of Lamu with books and DVD's? The project seemed to create only new questions: who is going to decide on what books this place needs? Is there really a need or a question to create a library, isn't there already a library that meets the needs? Isn't internet the real teacher nowadays and isn't it available to everyone? Isn't it attention and a real invested interest that young people, artists and others, need to be able to devellop their skills? Isn't it just another example of arrogant neo-colonialism and white privilege thinking that put the idea that I need to provide these young artists with anything in the first place?
