Michael Armitage
Sun Wukong in Gachie, 2015
Oil on Lubugo bark cloth
195.6 x 150.2 cm
Armitage creates his narrative paintings exploring politics, sexuality, civil unrest and cultural traditions on Lubugo, a cloth made by a long process of beating bark into sheets. Once a prized ceremonial material made by the Baganda people of Uganda, it is now readily available in East African marketplaces, often sold to tourists.
Sun Wukong in Gachie, 2015 shows a monkey pretending to be worker, watched by a suspicious woman and dog. Gachie is a locality just outside Nairobi. Sun Wukong, also known as the ‘Monkey King’, is a mythical character from the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en. In the story Sun Wukong acquires supernatural powers. The half-monkey, half-human figure, ringed with a vibrant, almost radioactive, aura that marks them out as a malevolent presence, is used by Armitage to comment on the high level of Chinese investment in African nations and the impact that capitalism and commerce is having on local society.