An African Storm

Lucia Nimcova got acquainted with a handmade stamp-manufacturer in the city of Kisumu, during her travel in Kenya. In Kisumu, he was one of the 15 stamp-producers with small tables on the main road.

“For different activities you might need a stamp. If you develop a programme or create an official and legitimate business, you need a real stamp, you pay extra money to get it, sooner or later. If your activity is not so important, or you prefer to avoid police or other individuals to ask money for no reasons, you have to commission professionals to falsify documents. They help to manage all the necessary stamps during your stay in the country, in reasonable time.”

Lucia Nimcova commissioned the stamp expert to create stamps based on the poem entitled An African Thunderstorm, by the Malawian poet, David Rubadiri. During their collaboration, 68 different stamps were created in a month. The poem now is being reconstructed by the artist on the walls of Lumen from its fragmented, stamped images, words and isolated phrases on the backs of photographs, which once were left behind by unknown people in various photographers