Artwork Spotlight: Miriam Syowia Kyambi’s Between Us, 2014

"How we present ourselves to the inner and outer world..." is the topic of Kenyan artist Miriam Syowia Kyambi's multimedia production Between Us (Performance Stills) which encompasses video, performance, installation, and photography. Currently being exhibited in the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair and featured on our Browse page this week, the piece is a collaboration between the artist and choreographer James Mweu, and examines how divisions between our private domestic life and public roles impacts contemporary viewpoints on the body and gender. Throughout the piece, dancers repeatedly dress, undress, look in the mirror, and hand wash clothes before hanging them up on clotheslines, demonstrating how these private but mundane actions (like washing clothes and putting on lingerie) create the 'choreography' of femininity and domesticity.

The work was produced over four weeks in Nairobi at The GoDown Art Centre.

Read more about the work in Kwambi's own words in a recent interview on Addis Rumble.