Kangaeru

Patterns are cut out from kanga, the traditional East African cloth, and recomposed. Freed from their original design and rules, the colorful, fragmented patterns are given new order and new stories—sometimes by the artist’s own hand, sometimes by the hands of participants in public workshops held on the streets of Nairobi—taking on distinctive and beautiful new forms. The resulting textile works were then worn with individual flair by street vendors, presented in a fashion show staged along Nairobi’s congested main roads, transformed for the occasion into a catwalk.