Michael Soi (Kenyan, born 1972)
Monday Morning, 2014
Signed ‘SOI W. MICHAEL JULY 2014’ (middle right)
Mixed media on canvas
100 x 300cm
Ksh 175,000-260,000
US$ 2,000-3,000
Sold Ksh 187,840
Michael Soi studied fine art at the Creative Arts Centre Nairobi. He joined Kuona Trust Centre for Visual Art at the Nairobi National Museum in 1996 and is currently a resident artist at the GoDown Arts Centre in Nairobi. He has exhibited in the US, UK, Netherlands, Germany, and in South Africa at the Johannesburg Art Fair in 2010. In June this year, he exhibited works from his China Loves Africa series in South Korea at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza and at Artion Art space in Seoul.
Soi’s paintings offer satirical social commentary on the issues that impact the average Kenyan. From Kenyan politics to commercial sex work, he explores the controversial issues the people prefer to ignore.
Produced specifically for the auction, ‘Monday Morning’ features a cross-section of the Nairobi demographic including a businessman, a sex trade worker, a drunk and curious school boys. Soi says it is “a reminder of Nairobi middle class growing up in Eastlands where everyone met in the bus stop in the morning. This particular piece is a depiction of what we see, hear and witness almost every day in the circus we call Nairobi.”