With highly-acclaimed shows at the Biennale Arte Venezia and the Museum of Modern Art in 2019, the Kenyan artist Michael Armitage appears unfazed and undeterred. His first show on the African continent, Accomplice: Michael Armitage, recently opened at The Norval Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa and features for the first time all the paintings from the 2017 election series—a poetic display of the ironies, nuances, and imaginaries of democratic transition.

A critical facet of Armitage’s creative process, which unfolds between Nairobi and London, involves looking at photographs that he has taken and drawing, giving him the freedom to make up figures on the lubugo bark cloth canvases he uses. Of importance to him and his practice is whether Kenyan audiences recognize the scenes he paints and how they might respond. Armitage uses a multitude of colors to mirror depth, and play with how viewers see the historical and daily life events of protest and electoral campaigning he depicts. Frustrations stemming from a failed attempt to exhibit in Nairobi prompted Armitage to explore the possibility of developing a non-profit space that would allow him to exhibit not only his work, but also the works of an older generation of Kenyan artists who are increasingly forgotten. Armitage spoke from Nairobi with Drew Thompson.