KAKIRA COOPERATIVE
At the Kakira-Art Imigongo cooperative, one of the oldest, widows of the genocide against the Tutsis sit on mats on the floor, adapting old paintings and motifs and transforming them into new decorative works, called imigongo. They use natural products such as cow dung, which forms the structure of the mural. Natural soil provides the red color, kaolin the white and clay the ochre. As for the glossy black, it's made from banana peel ash, "mixed with aloe juice and the fruit of the Solanum aculeastrum plant". At the root of imigongo lies the art of blending raw material ashes with cow dung and medicinal plants. The very opposite of industrial production. Initially, the Kakira association produced just twenty panels a month, but capacity increased as demand grew. And this tradition, once largely confined to eastern Rwanda, has now spread, with commercial paints replacing natural pigments and designs becoming more modern.
But who was Kakira? This 19th-century man was the son of the king of Gisaka in Kibungo province. He was also a precursor of interior decorators, for it was he who invented the art of embellishing Rwandan homes, thanks to the particular strength of motifs "that escape in infinite repetition from the limits that their support thinks it can impose on them".
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