Jess Atieno
Kenyan artist Jess Atieno maintains a practice informed by inquiries on place, home and dispossession through the lens of the post-colonial. Atieno sees herself as carrying inscriptions of a colonial past and studying as an adult in the US made her increasingly unable to situate herself in a static reality of belonging. With this inspiration, Atieno time travels into history through its material remains: historical photographs, maps and documents, employing them in prints, installations and tapestry. She turns to the idea of place as the transformative site of hybridity that offers alternative strategies for and models of representation within the post-colonial. Atieno is also the founder the Nairobi Print Project, an open source online library for artistic and curatorial research informed by African colonial and diaspora histories. The library will be the first of its kind in the region.