Murals with a Mission

Saving wildlife through stunning art in Zanzibar

By Andrea Tapper

Ten artists, ten masterpieces, one wild cause. In Fumba Town recently, young mural masters from East Africa revealed the secret of just how to get a painting on a wall. Their art is here to stay.

Chimps on a house facade, a Rothschild giraffe in a much-frequented food court, a rare pangolin creature on a staircase. For the first time ever, Zanzibar invited ten graffiti artists to paint the town red. The ‘Wild Murals Festival’, facilitated by developer CPS, took place in Fumba Town, combining art and activism in stunning style. “Our town is no longer just white”, fascinated residents remarked, happy about the artistic vibes in town. All murals – ten of them – are here to stay.

An atmosphere of creativity, fun, and even intellectualism got the seaside community hooked, as the artists were at work for a fortnight. It started with huge scaffoldings being erected: of course, how else would the artists reach the high walls, staircases and housing facades?

But the next steps of the art-in-progress show actually needed some more explaining. Smart and pretty little easels were placed in front of every artwork in progress, enabling the audience to get some basic information without distracting the artist.

“Pangolin-man” Mjeuri from Dar es Salaam painted one of the most trafficked mammals in the world on the walls of a staircase in support of a conservation program in his country. In the future, shoppers making their way up at the Pavilion centre will always be reminded of the pangolins’ plight.

How long do murals last?

“We use quality paint, so they can last up to 20 years”, said French-born artist Laura “La Zipolita”, one of the organisers of the festival. Together with Victoria Firth, an educator and experienced mural artist from England, she created the concept of the festival. The two women supported all artists to meet conservation organisations in their respective countries, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, to understand the causes of threats to wildlife, before picking up their brushes.

“Most of them were not conservationists before”, Vicky Firth explained. “Everything was new to me”, said Ninah Tanya, 26, from Nairobi, busy with a ‘wall of women’ – Samburu tribe ladies engaged in the Grevy Zebra Trust in Kenya. “There are only 3,000 grevy zebras left in the world”, the artist learnt, 90 percent of them in Kenya. Winning over rural tribal women to join efforts to protect the animals by mobile-monitoring and growing grass for them, has helped a lot.

Modern technique, old traditions

Modern technique, art and tradition seem to work well together. But why did Ninah scribble her entire wall with little abstract brush strokes only to paint over them afterwards? “This is called doodling”, she explained, “it helps to get accurate proportions of the larger-than-life images on the wall.” Msale, also from Nairobi, explored another technique. To project his huge 4×3-metre Rothschild giraffe on the sand-coloured wall of a food court in Fumba Town, he used his mobile, then painted it using a technic called ‘calligraffiti’, a term derived from calligraphy. An ornamental circle containing the Swahili words “pole pole” framed and positioned his giraffe. With his specific style, the 30-year-old father regularly gets commissioned by Kenyan.