Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, has lengthy been referred to as “the green city in the sun” as a result of its mixture of woodland and fields some of the city sprawl, but it surely all is determined by the place you might be viewing it from.

Noticeable from one of the crucial town’s relaxed condo blocks or properties, next sure, possibly – from certainly one of its densely packed slums, next disagree.

There, age may also be characterized by means of poverty and ecological emergency, corresponding to spillage and devastating landslides.

However an artwork collective – Kairos Futura – has been looking to pluck what would possibly appear to be probably the most town’s extra dystopian components and develop a optical of a utopia, or a minimum of how that may well be completed.

Their exhibition Hakuna Utopia options the works of 7 artists exploring subject matters of apocalypse and resilience – some in fairly summary techniques – as they reply to the day by day demanding situations persevered by means of Nairobi’s six million citizens.

One of the crucial collective, Stoneface Bombaa, grew up in Mathare, the capital’s second-largest casual agreement.

He has conquer stunning odds to develop into an artist and desires to worth his paintings to deal with the best way that folk in Mathare are living – continuously missing jobs, housing and schooling.

Bombaa says they bear a “hand-to-mouth economy”, by no means positive the place their then meal will come from.

“People are really angry,” he says, however thru artwork, he feels he can “channel” his nation’s fury into one thing sure as “art unites”.

Bombaa got down to develop from the exhibitions “micro-utopia” websites dotted across the town.

He known as it the “jungle room” and was hoping to get folk to secured with nature from inside Mathare itself, in an struggle to bridge the ecological divide.

Satirically, the development he had recognized as a imaginable web site used to be demolished by means of the government to put together approach for a highway.

Undeterred, he has been taking youngsters from his nation, continuously caught residing in not possible city squalor, to revel in Nairobi’s verdant landscapes and reveal them to inexperienced areas.

“There are no trees or green spaces in Mathare,” Bombaa says.

However by means of considering the theory of utopia, he believes that he can consider what it will be like if folk in his nation if truth be told had unrestricted get right of entry to to the town’s inexperienced areas.

On this approach, folk in his nation can declare a proper to get right of entry to nature this is denied to them just because they’re beggarly.

Bombaa additionally complains about how regular Nairobians, continuously scrabbling to put together a residing, must pay to go into a few of their town’s most pretty places such because the arboretum or Karura woodland.

The Kairos Futura group also are drawing inspiration from nature to worth their creativeness in methods to cope with pressing environmental problems.

For instance, Coltrane McDowell has carried out this to structure.

In his paintings Undercover Towns, he used to be impressed by means of termite mounds to reimagine what structure would possibly appear to be going forward.

Every other artist within the display, Abdul Rop, recognized for his mesmerising woodcut prints and art work, says that to bring to “achieve utopia”, Nairobians wish to paintings in combination.

“That’s why the young people are agitating right now for change,” he says, suggesting they’re pissed off by means of a corrupt political machine that hems of their doable.

Gen Z have been at the leading edge of protests this date in opposition to unutilized tax measures, which noticed the federal government put together an embarrassing U-turn.

Rop argues that by means of excited about utopia in the course of the lens of artwork, younger folk might in finding inventive techniques to struggle for his or her occasion.

Instead than being far-fetched, he thinks that it may well aid consider a bolder and extra equivalent occasion for his town.

“The moment to act for the future is now,” he says.