Politics pervades everything: Kenyan artists take on status quo

Elections are not for a year, but protests have already erupted into violence. Those tensions are having direct effect on artWorking on an industrial estate, Michael Soi paints giant, brightly coloured pictures of bar-girls and international businessmen in Nairobi’s nightclubs, and talks of art as dissent. A mile or so away, Peterson Kamwathi stands in a cut-down shipping container cum studio and says it his role to fight polarisation. Next door, Longinos Nagila hangs a work bearing the sl