Michael Armitage (b. 1984, Nairobi, Kenya)

The Chicken Thief

2019, oil on lubugo bark cloth, 200 x 150cm.

Photo by White Cube. Courtesy of White Cube and Michael Armitage. ©Michael Armitage.

One of a series about the 2017 Kenyan elections, this painting depicts a man running with two stolen chickens. In the chaos of the election season, he manages to escape in one piece - mostly. Behind him trails a shadowy, baboon-like figure, engulfed in flames. What do you think he represents?

READ MORE ABOUT THE BACKGROUND…

Armitage based the works on images he saw himself or on social media. At the election rallies, he heard politicians making empty promises just to win votes. At one, the speaker announced that he would take his followers to “Canaan”, the “promised land” of the Israelites in the Biblical story.

Armitage often makes use of anthropomorphic symbolism in his paintings. He likens it to the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell, a satire where animals represented different figures in the Russian Revolution of 1917.