![Pinterest](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://uknews.evprotec.com/how-to-do-kenya-differently-in-2023/&media=https://uknews.evprotec.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/TELEMMGLPICT000315627720_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqrZfcus5uWx6xFtxWl0A6MwNlKDiouxj8Ws_O_Hq5T2A.jpeg&description="Does African art matter? It does internationally – but does it matter to Africans? Should it? That was the question I asked myself," Peter Achayo explained earnestly. What a difference a day makes. Yesterday I'd been in the wilderness, tracking wild dogs. Now I was on the hunt for Nairobi's thriving arts scene, having an existential debate with Peter, my guide, in the back of a slow-moving taxi. At this moment, he was explaining what led him to leave a successful marketing career and follow his passion, becoming a Contemporary African art promoter and documenter. "We've hundreds of exciting artists in Nairobi alone," he continued. "Many exhibit overseas, where their collectors are: but they're not well known here. I'm on a mission to change that." My own Art Experience had been curated by Peter and fashion designer Anna Trzebinski, at whose hybrid hotel I was staying. Part bijou bolthole, part living museum-cum-private gallery, part cultural salon (yes, really), Eden Nairobi was once the Trzebinski family home. During the pandemic, Anna transformed the four-acre Langata property, adding bedrooms (now nine), and an ostrich-egg embellished restaurant and bar overlooking a wild-swimming lake. Still, the Cypress-clad Main House – built in the early 1990s by Anna and her late husband, the revered Kenyan-born artist Tonio Trzebinski – remains Eden's heart. A Brobdingnagian cabinet of curiosities, Eden bursts with Anna's lovingly curated treasures: wooden headrests, Samburu snuff boxes, a bead-encrusted chair…and Tonio's art. Murdered in 2001 during a suspected carjacking, his work dominates: from tortured figurative oil-on-canvas works, to charcoal sketches of baboons. A testament to Trzebinski talent, the remaining gaps are filled mainly with pieces by the couple's two children: sculptor Stanislaw and ceramicist Lana. Conceived as more than simply somewhere to top and tail a safari, Eden is all about connection. Hence its signature art tours. "I'm passionate about){kind=link}
With living museums, private galleries and art classes, this is the year to discover the country’s creative safari rather than the Big Five
“Does African art matter? It does internationally – but does it matter to Africans? Should it? That was the question I asked myself,” Peter Achayo explained earnestly.
What a difference a day makes. Yesterday I’d been in the wilderness, tracking wild dogs. Now I was on the hunt for Nairobi’s thriving arts scene, having an existential debate with Peter, my guide, in the back of a slow-moving taxi. At this moment, he was explaining what led him to leave a successful marketing career and follow his passion, becoming a Contemporary African art promoter and documenter.
“We’ve hundreds of exciting artists in Nairobi alone,” he continued. “Many exhibit overseas, where their collectors are: but they’re not well known here. I’m on a mission to change that.”
My own Art Experience had been curated by Peter and fashion designer Anna Trzebinski, at whose hybrid hotel I was staying. Part bijou bolthole, part living museum-cum-private gallery, part cultural salon (yes, really), Eden Nairobi was once the Trzebinski family home.