Banana Hill Art Gallery

About this audio guide

This guide to Banana Hill Art Gallery in Nairobi begins with Shine Tani, a street acrobat who never meant to open a gallery, giving away his own bed and kitchen table to artists with nowhere else to work. It follows him to Ruth Schaffner of the legendary Watatu Gallery, who turned him away as a painter but pressed a brush into his hands anyway, and the year and a half before he sold his first picture. He and his wife Rahab built that debt into Banana Hill Art Studio in nineteen ninety-four, an arrangement that grew from twelve founding members before Tani became its legal owner in two thousand six.