Kuln’Zu (b. 1998) is a Mozambican artist, living and working in Nairobi, Kenya. With a multicultural background, Kuln’Zu has always had a hybrid practice as an artist, photographer and film/cultural programmer. Their artistic practice revolves around photography, collage and poetry. Kuln’Zu crafts layered meditations of movement, migration and its relationship/complications with belonging, care and desire. Primarily taking interest in male bodies as vectors of motion and movement and sites of inquiry. Kuln’Zu is interested in embracing fragmentation and repetition, weaving textures, mediums and techniques to explore the contemporary experience of having multiple identities.
What Inspired your decision to be an artist?
I see craft as a means of survival, as a strategy in staying alive and staying well; to manage my breath. I can’t say when I arrived at art, but I can say that I continue to return to it, to choose to create to focus my mind, body and spirit. It’s how I live. It’s like I was a playwright in high school, had stints in choirs, I learned to organise through cultural and art events. I’ve always found myself in spaces to celebrate and work with expression. So ‘to be an artist’… I now place art at the centre of what I do.
What type of Art do you do?
The state of me and all my hyphens: I am a visual artist concerned with photography and portraiture, expanding the surfaces of where I present images through paper and textile collage, painting and a general openness to found materials. So I create collaged photographs; along with photographic portraits. it embraces fragmentation, it is lyrical, tender and intimate; very gay, very queer; experimental and surreal. I am also a cultural worker primarily working in film programming and production. So I’ve been a part of organising a few film festivals such as the Sanbonani! film festival at Pomona College, the 22nd New York African Film Festival, and the first Atlanta African Film Festival. Along with Film Festivals, I consult or program for film initiatives and other cultural ventures as an event organiser, program manager, grant writer, MC, participant. You name it, I love contributing a strategic mindset in the arts, and I think tending to culture is a craft. I am a writer. My work has appeared in journals and performed publicly.


How did you learn how to make art?
My sister gave me her camera when I moved to South Africa to complete my A-Levels. On my lonesome to boarding, she gave me something to hold the memories. So I learned to photograph as a wide-eyed 16 yr old. Very moody and documentary style work. But at Pomona College, through Art History classes with prof. Phyllis Jackson, I was introduced to the vast world of African contemporary art: film, video art, photography, painting, collage, sculpture, the whole gamut. By learning to critique and appraise artistic practices of a range of artists, I threw my hat into photography and film programming as the foundations of my craft. I learned photographic portraiture and digital collage in undergrad, teaching myself photoshop and taking inspiration from the artists I studied in class. And throughout the pandemic I had quite a bit of time, and pent up feelings, to meditate, craft and create.
What story do you tell with your Art?
I meditate on movement, as in migration, as in motion, as in changing; and how it is experienced in the psyche, body and spirit. I’ve developed a sensitivity to thinking about life, love and living along borders. Half my life was in Mozambique, and the other half, I’ve been diasporized/dispersed to parts of the world. And I try to tell the story of what questions about life and love come with the fragmentation, repetition, multiplicity of travel. Or as Jafari S. Allen puts it, to ‘enunciate Black/Queer/Diaspora’
Who/what are your biggest artistic influences?
My biggest influence has to be Rotimi Fani-Kayode, a British-Nigerian photographer whose main concern was the beauty, intimacy and lives of Black Gay Men in London during the 70s-80s; along with Zanele Muholi, Aida Muluneh these have been pillars of portraiture and photography. Lina Iris-Viktor has inspired me to expand the surface of photography into mixed media. Along with Ocean Vuong, Moses Sumney and Nakhane.


What are some of your major works, collaborations, and exhibitions? Are there any people you would like to work with in future?
My favourite collaboration has been being part of Njoroge Muthoni’s documentary ‘How to Live’ (highly recommend) which follows the lives and crafts of different queer creatives and artists in Nairobi, from the burgeoning ballroom scene, to drag kings and queens. All in the name of shaking ass in a healing circle. It is a love letter to the queers and creative community of this city. And I loved sharing my craft with him and our community. I’ve had my work exhibited in group shows with Ardhi Gallery and Kioko Art Gallery in Nairobi, and was featured artist at Queer Festival Heidelberg. These have been cool spaces lately. The future: I would like to work with and learn from Moses Sumney and Obongjayar, Wangechi Mutu, and Nakhane.
In 5 years, where do you want to be with your art?
A solo exhibition, or a handful, would be delightful. I definitely would like to direct a few music videos. Get my head on a desk and put it towards a novel in the next 5 years. But more than anything I want the time, space and freedom to experiment, play and expand what my art is. So I’d love to give my craft the investment of time and attention, and let the rest of it surprise me. But on the other side I want to grow closer in Cultural Advocacy, increasing the visibility of policies needed to support creatives and artists from the perspective of an artist.
Interviewed by Emmanuel Paapa Quaicoe.