Sondeka 2014: Story behind the paintings

Sondeka 2014 Creations

Team: Gemini Vaghela, Onyis Martin, Natasha Joshi

Brief: Create a piece showing cultural diversity and fusion in Kenya/Africa in the future

1.     Culture Shock – This creation aims to unify the people through colors and textures. The design highlights the creation of one people. The dots in the background slowly coming together to form the one people. The images of the people are very abstract and no distinctive form to show the unity of one people.  

The color scheme used in the creation of this artwork is specifically chosen to represent every culture there could be. The multicolored color scheme covers all our differences to bring us all together.

The highlight of creating this piece was that every willing person passing by our tent had a hand in adding some of the background dots. From age 8 onwards, we had a wide range of art lovers trying their hand at dotting our creation.

2    Bridging Cultures – This piece is a much simpler version showing how diverse we are and how we are trying to bridge the gaps. The landscape represents culture from different areas being “bridged” by the bridge across the river. The message here is “cross the river to our side”. The sun popping out of the shadows signifying a new dawn. The flow of the river representing the move from dark to light.

The color scheme here is also very colorful and bright to represent colors of every culture which finally merge to form a beautiful rainbow effect.

The highlight of this piece was working with water as the base to merge colors.

The photo: Natasha Joshi (left), Gemini Vaghela (middle), Onyis Martin (right)

The paintings: Bridging Cultures (left), Culture Shock (right)