Material Languages: The Nest Collective (Nairobi) – Stroom (Den Haag)

The Nest Collective is a multidisciplinary arts collective living and working in Nairobi, Kenya. They create works in film, music, fashion, visual arts, literature and other media. At Stroom the focus in Material Languages will be on the exploration of textiles as a medium, in a continuum of, and as an extension of, their work in fashion.

Through their work The Nest Collective explore African urban and contemporary experiences, troubling modern identities, including LGBT+ identities, re-imagine the past and reflect on possible futures. Their interventions are designed to engage audiences, thus enabling nuanced discussion and debate of the issues raised, while also advancing aesthetic and artistic value.

Due to the covid pandemic and travel restrictions we are experimenting with the format of a hybrid residency.

Their overall textile project — represented in this particular Our House, your Home iteration by Collective members Sunny Dolat, Dr. Njoki Ngumi & Jim Chuchu — brings together their evolving thoughts about how textiles can help unpack belonging, identity, culture and design.

19:00 (NL) / 20:00 (KE)
Nanga Nanga: Future Textile Heritages by Sunny Dolat

Online presentation on textile heritages and futures. Nanga is a project exploring textiles as a tether, through which a people are anchored in their cultural heritage. In interrogating Kenya's textile history, Sunny Dolat explores the connection between the country's textile history and the country's identity crisis.
Watch the registration on Youtube

Founded in 2012, The Nest Collective has created works like the critically-acclaimed queer anthology film Stories of Our Lives, which has so far screened in over 80 countries and won numerous awards, and Tuko Macho - a groundbreaking interactive crime web series widely considered to be one of the best African TV series. The Nest Collective also founded HEVA Fund - Africa's first creative business fund of its kind - to strengthen the livelihoods of East Africa's creative entrepreneurs.

Stroom invited The Nest Collective to join Our House, your Home in 2020. Due to the pandemic, our guests have not been able to travel to The Hague yet. Therefore we are experimenting with the format of a hybrid residency. We asked ourselves what is an artistic residency? What infrastructure can Stroom offer to its guests? How can we learn together and collaborate over a distance? How to engage our guests with the local creative community of The Hague? These questions are being exercised on a weekly basis.

Three artists from The Nest Collective - Jim Chuchu, Sunny Dolat and Njoki Ngumi - have been working from Nairobi since September 2020, researching textiles as a medium. They share their research process by video calls and email. In these online meetings they also receive guests and meet different staff members of Stroom. They are addressing various facets of the medium: from textile making (weaving/printing techniques), to visual cultures, identity, history and performativity. Through this research, they also search for strategies to tackle issues of decolonization, sustainability and spirituality. Departing from the notion that Kenya does not present a textile tradition of its own (as opposed to West African countries), the artists have delved into finding contemporary approaches that speak to their public, with a focus on the queer community, and aiming to reach the local market with affordable prices.

Stroom has invited The Hague-based artist Ludmila Rodrigues to be the guest project leader.