Greg Constantine's Exhibition | Kenya's Nubians: Then & Now.
From 6:30pm
Thursday the 18th November.
Exhibition Dates: 17 - 26 November 2010
Kenya’s Nubians: Then & Now is the first exhibition in London for photographer Greg Constantine (USA, b. 1970). The Nubian community has lived in Kenya for over 100 years. Incorporated into the British Army in the late 1880s and brought to Kenya from Sudan by the British at the turn of the century, Nubians served for the British in the King’s African Rifles during WWI and WWII and were vital to the development of Kenya and East Africa. They held British colonial passports and birth certificates that stated their nationality as British. Unable to return to their homeland, the British designated over 4000 acres of land for the Nubians and their families to settle on. The Nubians named the land, Kibra or ‘land of forest’. After Kenyan Independence, the Nubian community has historically been denied recognition and has been one of Kenya’s most invisible and under-represented communities. Over the past 40 years, hundreds of thousands of rural migrants have flooded into Nairobi in search of work and Kibra has been the land where they’ve been encouraged to settle. All of the Nubian’s claims to the land provided to them by the British have been denied. Eventually the Nubian settlement of Kibra would turn into Kibera, one of the largest slums in Africa.
Kenya’s Nubians: Then & Now combines rare, historical photographs of the Nubian community in Kenya dating back to 1912 with Constantine’s recent work on the community’s struggle for recognition. The exhibition aims to promote the dynamic and rich history of a community few in Kenya and the United Kingdom are aware of, and it intends to help tell the story of a community who, as one Nubian elder described is, “being squeezed into extinction.”
HOST GALLERY
1, Honduras Street,
London
EC1Y OTH
Tel: +44 (0)207 253 2770
Opening Times:
Monday - Friday: 10am - 6pm
Saturday: 11am - 4pm
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