Jimmy Centeno: The Dreamer as a Prophet

I had talked to him a couple of times, then one day, in August 2017, Jimmy  Centeno turned up in my office at the University of California, Irvine, with a gift for me. 

It is a sculpture of the eponymous hero of my novel, Matigari. What, somebody in Los Angeles, a Latinx, had been inspired by my novel, and took the time to sculpt the hero?

The novel is set in Kenya. It describes a freedom fighter who, after years in the mountains, finally comes home with dreams of rejoining his family, only to find that those who inherited power had continued all the colonial structures he had been fighting to dismantle. His family is still torn apart. He wants to put back his broken home together. But to do so, he must seek the truth of what had happened. He is on the road again, this time an unarmed seeker of truth and Justice. 

What was it that had made this citizen of Los Angeles, with roots in Latin America, spend so much time and energy sculpting this image of Matigari, a character drawn from Kenya People’s armed resistance to British colonial rule? In one image, Centeno had somehow linked the struggles in Kenya, Africa, with those of Latin America. Matigari could have come from any country in Latin America or wherever in the world dwell seekers of truth and Justice.

Then I noticed his Matigari had several metal rings, a chain link around the neck, two suspending red banners all joined together by a broken wood handle from a  shovel. A small square plate with a large coat button installed in the center of the wood handle served as a memory medallion. The base was round and collective. 

So, the sculpture was made out of discarded metal, buttons and wood, including a shovel, clearly a pointer to a worker and their tools. Centeno had given life to discarded material, making them whole, breathing the life of a freedom fighter. He had turned the seemingly lifeless into a sculpture that breaths freedom.

It reminded me of the work of Pitika Ntuli, the SouthAfrican poet-artist, whose sculpture is nearly always made out of discarded material, including bones. And both Ntuli and Centeno remind me of Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones, who is commanded by the Lord to tell them:  I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.  In the  same way the Muse commands Centeno: Collect these discarded pipes, and shovels and wood, and breathe life into them.  Centeno’s Heart and Mind and  Hands are united as they connect the pieces into images.

And the discarded united objects now  talk, Centeno’s art talks. 

In one of his exhibitions,  Somos Sur in Los Angeles in 2019, I saw an elongated serpentine water pipe sculpture with a tap at the end and I turned it on. No water. The tap without water is titled in Spanish ‘La Muerte También Tiene Sed‘, Death is Also Thirsty.  This spoke volumes about the human made desertification of the land. 

The image reminded me of  Ritwik Kumar Ghatak , the Indian Bengali director, whose film A River Called Titus, had similarly seen and warned of the consequences of the human misuse of nature. 

The same theme is captured in Centeno’ sculpture “Barbequing The Global South”, part of his upcoming exhibition.  It makes a reference to the abuse of the natural resources of the Global South and its people as a labor force, by the Global North. 

I can now see what attracted Centeno to the figure of Matigari. He must have seen himself reflected in the character. Just like Matigari, Centeno is an artist of connection: the human, the water, the air,  and the earth, are one; or rather without the earth, without the air, and without water, there is no human race. And the human and the nature on earth need the light and heat from the Sun. Connection is the heart of life. 

This is what he says of himself:“I seek to connect my art with my way of living and being. It can not be separate. It is an extension of my commitment , my solidarity and concern for justice and truth”

This is well illustrated in another of his creations combining two art pieces: metal bed frame titled ‘Dreaming Between Fences’ (2008) and a centerpiece with branches inside the bed frame, titled  ‘Homage to Karl Marx’. It intrigued me. Centeno  noted my curious puzzlement. This is what he told me:

“The brutal persecution by merciless landowners of the peasantry as they collected wood from the ground  haunted  Marx’s indignation. The prohibition to collect wood from the ground was as disturbing as the water wars in Bolivia, where Indigenous were banned from collecting rainwater from their roof tops without a permit in 1999”

It was from the same exhibition that I was drawn to  a marble and welded steel sculpture titled Rising Up. I went round the gallery several times, looking at the various images, and I would end up at the same one. I bought it. 

Rising up seems to embody the spirit of Centeno in life and work. As the curator for Casa0101 Theater, Centeno is driven by the same spirit of  Rising, which necessitates connections. The connecting spirit can  best be seen in Centeno’s  reaction to my gĩkũyũ language story, called Ituĩka rĩa Mũrũngarũ/the Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans walk upright.  The story tells of an epic battle between hands and legs to settle once and for all  which organ was more important to the body, only to find that no organ can really do without the other. Through the efforts of Munyao Kilolo, the story has now been translated into more than ninety languages in the world. These translations can be found here https://jaladaafrica.org/. Centeno organized a number of Latinx artists and One Nigerian for a visual interpretation of the story. 

There have been two exhibitions of this effort. The first exhibition of ‘A visual Interpretation of Upright Revolution or Why Humans Walk Upright’ took place from May 2nd to August 30th 2019 at the Jean Deleage Art Gallery located in Casa 0101 Theater, Los Angeles CA. The second exhibition took place from  March 1st to April 26th 2020 at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton, CA. See https://jaladaafrica.org/  In Centeno’s own words, “Curating Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s story, The Upright Revolution Or Why Humans walk Upright, as a visual interpretation with paintings, linocuts prints and sculptures,  merged Latin American and African aesthetic. It allowed each artist to express unity with a story of resilience.” So here is Jimmy Centeno connecting Los Angeles to Africa and Latin America.

Centeno says he is inspired by La Escuela del Sur ( The school of The South ) where by means of rescued objects a language of self determination arises in the process of giving shape to sculptures, assemblages and mixed media art pieces. Desde Las Orillas ( From The Edges) includes hints and influences from life, de-colonial writings, literature, art, poetry, mythology, film and oral traditions. In his exhibitions all the its and bits that make up the artwork join as a personal statement that embodies many voices. 

Centeno, in life and art, reminds me of the 18th Century English poet-artist William Blake. Blake was a poet, painter, print maker, basically a worker. He was also 

a visionary who saw angels sprouting among trees and the working class.  He once opened  his Auguries of Innocence with these immortal line:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

These lines are at the heart of my book: Globalectics. Centeno strives to see the world in everything he touches. His exhibitions and all his artwork are a personal statement that embodies many voices. He thus is driven by a globalectic view of the world. Or as he says: his work is political, cultural and globalectic.

Sultan Somjee, a Kenyan artist who worked on community based peace museum, has published a book titled: One Who Dreams is called a Prophet. Centeno is  such a dreamer.

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