Ato Malinda

Ato Malinda, is a multidisciplinary performance artist.

Early life In 1981 she was born in Kenya, as the daughter of a Kenyan mother and an Ugandan father. She grew up in the Netherlands, but returned to Kenya as a teenager. After high school she moved to the USA where she studied Art History and Molecular Biology at the University of Texas. She had a rough childhood of not being able to satisfy her father's desires of becoming a doctor. In 2006 after moving to London for a little, her desire to pursue art was reawakened. Ato was born with a Ugandan name, however at the beginning of her practice she created an artistic persona, Ato Malinda. She briefly adopted the name Alex Mawimbi to align to her identity but it did not work, so she changed it back to Ato Malinda. Ato has lived and worked in many places, from the USA, The Netherlands, Germany and has now moved back to Kenya where she works in multiple art disciplines: video art, performance art, installation, drawing, and painting. In addition, she works as an educator and curator. Ato is one of a few performance artists in East Africa and is fighting hard for this relatively unknown art discipline to become more accepted. Many of Ato's performances are transformed into video art, with new layers and perspectives added to the original performance

Career

She studied art history and molecular biology at the University of Texas, in hopes of becoming a doctor. was both observed and recorded. In 2016, she was an awardee at the National Museum of African Art's inaugural African Art Awards and highlighted by The Wall Street Journal as an emerging artist. Malinda is based in Rotterdam.

Works Ato Malinda has exhibited in numerous countries in Africa, Europe and the Caribbean and had residencies in Cameroon, Denmark, and Curaçao.

Fait Ensemble, 2010

The video is about Mami Wata, an ancient African water spirit, who has been worshipped by Africans before the arrival of Europeans but came into recorded history in the 15th Century. It was recorded that at the sight of European ships, Africans associated water spirits with the Europeans. During colonialism, in the 1880s a famous German hunter, Breitwiser, brought back a wife from Southeast Asia to Germany. Breitwiser's wife performed in Hamburg's volkerschau, essentially human zoos, under the stage name “Maladamatjaute”. She charmed snakes. The Frienlaender lithographic company, in Hamburg, made a chromolithograph of the snake charmer, the original of which has never been found. However in 1955, this image was reprinted in Bombay, India, sent to them from Ghana. It is unknown how exactly the image got to West Africa, but it is thought to have been taken from Hamburg by African sailors when they were in Germany. However on its arrival in Africa, locals declared Maladamatjaute to be a resemblance to Mami Wata. The image has since proliferated throughout the African continent as Mami Wata, the snake charmer. On Fait Ensemble suggests in a metaphorical sense, that this image came from Europeans. This is done through the market performance of Papai Wata. Papai Wata, the concomitant to Mami Wata in Beninese traditional ceremonies, symbolizes the European man and is depicted in the video by a white painted face.

These are just a few of her works, she utilizes many different mediums such as music, drawing and painting, installation and ceramics.

Artistic influences A recurrent theme in many of Ato's art works is identity: female identity, black identity, African identity, cultural identity. She has, among other things, examined “africanity”, female stereotyping, women's role and social status in Kenya, but also the influence of architecture on the formation of identity.

Further reading and notable publications The following are publications that note the artist as well give an intellectual perspective on her art.

Local Voices in the Scholarly Discourse on Art Studies in Kenya: A Postcolonial Enigma by Kwame Amoah Labi, Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture, 2017 Political Independence, Personal Independence: An Art Historical Perspective on Contemporary Kenya and the Avant-Gardes by Pierre-Nicolas Bounakoff, Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture, 2017 African Artists Make Their Mark, Overcome Adversity by Sarafina Wright, Washington Informer, 2016 Arts & Entertainment: The New Face of African Art --- Collectors are discovering Africa, where new galleries, museums and fairs are flourishing by Kelly Crow, Wall Street Journal, 2016 An Artist's Perspective on Africa at the Armory: An Interview with Ato Malinda, by Joseph Underwood, 2016 The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists by Allison Moore, Critical Interventions: The Africa-Italy Connection, 2016 Ato Malinda on sexuality, African feminism and performance as art – interview , Art Radar, 2014 Globalizing East African Culture: From Junk to jua kali Art by Swigert-Gacheru, Margaretta, Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, 2011 The scars of dissipation: memory, catharsis and the search for the aesthetic by Jimmy Ogonga, African Identities, 2011