Tuesday 19 May 2009

Seen from the sky

Jambo sana. Walking through the slum from the Kianda project to the Mashimoni project you basically follow the railway line (except for the parts where it goes into a ravine as its like the Jericho road, very conducive to muggings). Anyway at other parts the railway is up on a mound and you can see over Kibera. The first time we walked it we noticed some paint on some of the roofs, looking closer we realized it was eyes and faces looking up out of the slum.

This required some investigation, after some googling around I discovered the artist goes by the name of JR and this ‘piece’ was part of a bigger project called women are heroes. He has taken pictures of women from Kibera and printed up their photos on huge tarpaulins to cover the roofs of the shacks. He also covered a train in photos so when the train passes at one point the eyes line up with the smiles on the side of the mound. This guy likes taking pictures of people who otherwise go unnoticed then he sneaky sneaky plasters their photographs massive somewhere it can’t be ignored. Inspired. You can see more photos on his website www.jr-art.net or www.28millimetres.com/women/. He’s done a lot of other interesting projects across Africa, India, South America and on the Gaza strip. Check it out!




3 comments:

Sue said...

Wow! How long have the pictures been there, is it the first time you've seen them?

I wonder what the people in Kibera think of them or if they can recognise who they are. Must have taken ages to get the parts in the right place for when the trains come through, how did they do it????

Looked at Kibera on the website, its so huge!!!!!

Take care,love you, Mum xxxxxxxxxx

Em Schmee said...

Yep 3 square kilometres of slum, it takes about 45 minutes to walk from one project to the other. The pictures have been there since february this year but it doesn't look the same as in the pictures anymore because some of the tarps have been nicked.

Ye it was the first time i saw them the other day because it was the first time i had walked through that part of Kibera.

deb said...

interesting!