The artistic project “Jute Portraits,” curated by Franz Cerami, aims to celebrate in a creative and innovative way the community of workers involved in the coffee value chain in Kenya, placing people, their stories and their role at the center of one of the country’s most important agricultural sectors.
Franz Cerami is an Italian visual artist active internationally, known for projects that combine portraiture, community participation and multimedia installations. His work often focuses on the social dimension of art and on the relationship between identity, memory and territory, through a creative processes that involve directly the people portrayed and the local contexts.
The project began in early March with a two-week artistic residency in Kenya. During this initial phase, the artist held a two-day workshop at Kenyatta University, where he presented his artistic background and explained the creative process through which the portraits are produced. During the workshop, he also illustrated how these images will later be reworked and transformed into a larger artistic installation. The artist also shared with students his international experience and the methodology that characterizes his projects: an approach based on participation, dialogue with communities and the direct involvement of people in the creative process.
In the following weeks, the artist created numerous portraits of members of the community involved in the coffee value chain. These images will later be reworked and transformed into a videomapping project and a multimedia artistic installation, which will be presented to the Kenyan public in the months of May and June.
During the evenings of 28 and 29 May 2026, the project will also take shape within the urban space through a series of light projections and videomapping interventions across different areas of Nairobi. Faces, details and visual fragments of the artwork will suddenly appear on buildings, walls and urban architectures, temporarily transforming the city into a large narrative surface dedicated to Kenya’s coffee communities.
The culminating moment of the project will take place on 2 June 2026, during the celebrations of the Italian National Day, with a large immersive installation at the Residence of the Ambassador of Italy in Nairobi. For the occasion, the portraits created by Franz Cerami will be projected onto a scenographic structure made of jute, bamboo and ropes, created with the contribution of local Kenyan artisans. The installation will combine videomapping, light, natural materials and soundscape into an artistic experience dedicated to the faces, stories and memory of the coffee value chain.
Through these projections and installations, Jute Portraits transforms public art into a tool for dialogue between cultures, communities and territories, bringing into Nairobi’s urban and institutional spaces a visual reflection on the human and social value of coffee between Kenya and Italy.
For further information, multimedia materials and updates on the project, please visit the dedicated page:
JUTE PORTRAITS – Faces of Kenyan Coffee
“Jute Portraits” is an artistic project promoted by the Italian Cultural Institute of Nairobi and the Embassy of Italy in Kenya, with the support of UNIDO and the AICS Office of Nairobi.