Escapade one: Searching for Oneness

Photo by Gerald Odil

Original audio if you are on a walk or busy cleaning dishes…

1120hrs, 03/01/2026, Nakuru – I press send on my application for the ITI Academy Week.

My universe, sunny. My body, plagued with the laziness of year-end holidays. I had fought through this aura to roll out of bed and write the application. Even after sleeping through the New Year fireworks, I managed to wake myself up to upload and send.

Pressing send was not a case of ‘new year, new me’, ‘new year resolutions’, or any of that elusive January mix of hope and mythical storytelling we tell ourselves attached to self-improvement. My birthday falls in November; I prefer that to be the time I participate in coaxing, dopamine-induced beliefs of a bigger, better, brighter future.

I had started this ITI Academy Fellowship application the way I do all applications. Weeks before the deadline, I opened a Google Doc and proceeded to list all questions with checkboxes. Then, I wrote dirty drafts that I obsessively cleaned over subsequent weeks. Once I was 80% pleased with my answer, I crossed off the checkbox of each answered section. I am typically done with all boxes at least two weeks before the deadline. I don’t work well too close to deadlines…

I had stared at this application a month prior and deleted the document just before Christmas. I couldn’t understand why I wanted to be in another international room. I did not trust that I was qualified enough, and I wasn’t sure what I was searching for. In my heart, I was still carrying unresolved contradictions that made me doubt going in. I was still closing an international project; the administrative work after a co-producer left was still sitting unfinished; and some very unprecedented tasks were still waiting for me. I was genuinely depleted, as big projects take much more than just a little rest to recover. My mind needed a slow reset to consolidate experiences and come to terms with the good, bad, and everything in between.

A few days before the deadline, I decided to look at the application again.

In the middle of all my contradictions, I sat with the energy of 2010s girl-boss power and repeated empowerment bromides as I prepared to press send:

• You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take

• Be brave enough to risk being lucky

• Every day, pick up the pen and go on to write the life that no one could give to you

When I pressed send, I was ready for rejection. It wasn’t a submission I was particularly proud of. But none of my applications that have gone through are usually impressive… I had to reckon, in the final moments, it is always luck!

1250hrs, 11/02/2026, Nairobi – you have been selected for the ITI Academy Week Fellowship.

Congratulations! We look forward to meeting you.

Nairobi is red in February. I wonder if I will finally have a Valentine and get flowers or chocolates. I want to be in a red dress and to wrap myself in longing for love. Yes, I do wonder each year because I want to participate in these capitalist-induced festivities as escapism. Anything that gets me away from my desk helps me to forget the mundane task of applications and waiting for replies.

Earlier, a friend who also applied for the same fellowship texted; she had not got it. I wasn’t sure I could open my email. When I eventually did, I couldn’t believe it. As luck would have it, I was one out of 500 qualified applicants chosen to be a fellow. I have received other things from global submissions, but it’s always a surprise.

499 other artists
499 other working artists

Perhaps, my girl-boss incantations worked to bring universal alignment for this application, not so much for a few others I did at the same time.

1436hrs, 21/06/2026, Berlin – I record a video of the baggage carousel.

On arrival in Berlin, I had an awkward conversation with a lecturer from the University of Nairobi who was in town with his colleagues for a conference. He had noticed that we were on the same flight. After sharing several shy glances across countries, he finally mustered up the courage to come up to me. Unwilling to explain what I was doing in Germany, I lied that I was a tourist. He got a little intimidated, and we parted ways immediately. I am not sure why I lied. My luggage showed up quickly. I left…

The fellowship I had almost completely left out of my life was here.

The thing with any room with peers and colleagues is… they are the same, whether dressed up in suits or artworld garb. Everyone is there for some type of connection, some type of new exploration, and we all hope it opens us up to something better than we had before. From experience, I have learned this is never a guarantee. Sometimes you hope that at the very least you make a friend. The week was happening, and I hoped for the best.

What unfolded in the next week was enjoying long summer days, filling my water bottle with apfelschorle or orange juice any chance I could get, and eating up all the cherries on the snack table besides, of course, roasting the love affair between Germans and vegan/vegetarian food. We were, of course, in one of the European capitals of ‘alternative’ culture!

In the middle of the week, nevertheless, I found myself in communion with an inspiring group of people. Each person, a universe. Each actively making something in conversation with each part of our universe in a critical way.

Amongst these people, I remembered what I was searching for.

1100hrs, 23/06/2026, Berlin – I present a performance to encapsulate the thinking behind my practice.

This summer morning is a blur, as is any day filled with presentation jitters.

The performance itself was a well-intentioned, clumsy piece in need of further edits, but nonetheless, a true representation of where my heart was.

Underneath the extensive writing, I was seeking a hand to say, “It’s okay, let’s go this way and you’ll find your voice.” It wasn’t so much that I had lost my voice but that my voice was in conflict.

The question I had ignored earlier showed up again: why did I want to be in another international room? Was I ready to fully engage? Was I ready to reflect on topics such as artistic freedom and censorship, practices of collective care, fair collaboration and decolonisation?

Over time, I have become averse to presenting myself as a politically engaged artist. Not because there is any fault in it, but because the burden on artists from Africa to always carry some form of cultural representation in their work quickly becomes a method of masked tokenism. If celebrated but unquestioned, such engagements could and often do fail to acknowledge this one-dimensional expectation of an artist moving through international spaces. I question myself, my position, and my perpetuation of this a lot because I would rather meet people as I normally do in Kenya. A woman who likes tea, has a glass of wine at any time of the day, and occasionally indulges in tequila shots. We can laugh at ordinary life before we slowly switch to hard conversations about how English tea-time became a Kenyan tradition.

In this case, I am trying to escape what Chimamanda calls ‘The Danger of a Single Story’ by not feeding into one perspective. However, the irony is that it is impossible to escape this political projection. Engaging in life runs you into a subversive loop. The paradox — living fully is actively participating in the political, and this is necessary in how we shape the world. Suddenly, without any prompt or programme, I am participating in the system again.

Perhaps, I think, if I start the conversation with what weird things I like about breakfast, we could jump to the political after we have built some camaraderie around a different debate: What’s superior — hot or cold breakfast?

There was a certain relief in being caught up in the prongs of the very thing my Illusions were trying to escape. I did find the simple and mundane held fairly with the complicated nature of living today.

1327hrs, 30/08/2026, Nairobi – I remember how I felt that week.

Being in the room with other fellows, through seeing all their universes, was the only way I could remind myself what an artistic practice could be. Where I had doubts and conflicts, I could slowly start to find the equilibrium of my universe. My questions on being there were answered through sustained engagement.

Through each presentation, meditation, and workshop, I filled my empty cup. The source overflowed, and I could sense that I enjoyed how each person naturally built from what they cared for, not what they expected. New questions and learnings came up. I thought about these presentations weeks after we were done and adopted new positions from this room.

Many of us were living through countries in political turmoil, some searching for a new home, one of us who couldn’t make it because of a denied VISA, others using their practice to make where they come from a little bit better and liveable with resilient practices.

I remembered doubting myself and sending the application uncharacteristically late for myself, two days before the deadline! When the fellowship week was over, I was in awe of what I could have missed. I left remembering that I do not need to find the perfect words, the best framing. Another application will come. I will craft the perfect words for that…

I should always remember that I have a universe that I am actively involved in affecting. I should keep building it, tending to it, and it will lead me to where I need to be.