Strange Fruit

This painting is titled after Abel Meeropol's 1937 poem about the lynching of African Americans, made famous as a protest song by Billie Holiday in 1939. Looking up into the sky, Armitage's painting depicts the small figure of a Kenyan woman who has been hanged in a tree. The work is a response to tensions between younger and older generations in Kenya where 60% of the population is under 25 and youth unemployment is the highest in East Africa. In coastal Kenya there have been a number of reported cases in which younger family members have accused their elders of witchcraft and had them killed - often hanged - to obtain ownership of their valuable land.

Courtesy Qiao Zhibang