Book Bunk x The Nest Collective - A Maze and A Time Capsule!

We are thrilled to announce the opening of the Book Bunk ‘Missing Bits’ exhibition project, which we partnered with them on! We have prepared two main offerings for the exhibition. We curated selections from various English and Kiswahili newspaper archives which were being kept by the library from the years 1963, 1973 and 1983. We were interested in how media pieces then echo current knowledge that we have now, or even add unexpected insights, thus start new and interesting conversations regarding social, cultural and political issues comparing Kenya now and Kenya back then. We were also interested in the ways that our modes of expression, as well as our values and interests, have evolved over those years, to what they are today, close to 40 years after 1983! 

The exhibition will be set up in the form of a minimalist temporary maze, constructed outdoors in the library’s green lawn. This will allow people moving up and down through it, covered by tree shade, to take their time as they read or skim over the chosen articles, and enjoy the advertisements that we selected! We will also be sharing brief curatorial thoughts about what was interesting for us in the chosen pieces, as we thought about the bridges between the past and the current day. As an additional exciting perk, we are proud to feature Bryan Ngartia, storyteller, performer and all-round rabble-rouser, hosting engagement with us during the exhibition launch on Saturday 21st May 2022! He will devise and develop a series of fun questions for the exhibition attendees that day, loosely based on the maze content and related ideas. Exciting prizes will be up for grabs! 

Our second offering is a time capsule, developed from our curiosity about the hopes Kenya’s young people have for Kenya’s future. Working with BookBunk’s incredible community liaisons and facilitators, we are reaching out to schools within the Makadara community to ask students to submit paragraphs, poems, illustrations and more with regard to what they imagine Kenya will be like or will have achieved in the next 10 years, or even in the future. All these offerings will be put into a specially fabricated reinforced metal box, which will further be embellished by our long time collaborator, Kenyan applied artists and jeweller Ami Doshi Shah. The time capsule will then be sealed and buried on library grounds on Saturday 21st May 2022 at 2pm, and the time capsule registered online. The box will be ready to be unearthed in exactly 10 years time, any time from 21st May 2032!

The exhibition “The Missing Bits” opens on the 21st of May at the Makadara Eastlands Library, and will be on long into the month of June! Drop by any day between Monday to Saturday, and anytime between 10am to 5pm to have a walk-through of the exhibition and do let us and Bookbunk know what you think of the exhibition on any of our social media pages!