Politics & Lifestyle

HOLAA Loves: Kawira and friends’s erotic creations (stickers, colouring books and more!)

Over the years we have stumbled upon some pretty cool people, doing some pretty funky things and one of those people is Kawira  Mwirichia, a Queer, African, female visual artist with an innate desire to change the world through beauty that inspires and educates the community. In her words she says she is a ‘ visual artist and innovator who loves to do amazing work.’ This visual artist also loves loves dogs, the outdoors, playfights, hugs and fistbumps.

Illustrations are her thing having created such dope projects such as her lesbian Karma Sutra book entitled Lez Ka-lour for AFRA Kenya’s auction in 2014/2015. We all remember how, during that time, colouring was all the rage and Kawira was inspired by a whatsapp group discussion that was planning that auction to create the Lez Ka-lour colouring book.

Some more of her incredible work includes the To Revolutionary Type Love (#TRTL) project, a project which uniquely illustrated rainbow love on kangas* using symbols unique to the triumphs of the queer movement in each country. Each of the kangas represent a country’s Queer history by using the symbols around that history to create the designs and inspire the sayings and/or colours. So far she has 34 designs, but it’s an ongoing project which she hopes to wrap up next year.

Kawira says ’I really can’t think of a time that I was never illustrating to some degree, but I guess I started putting my work out there more around 2011(ish) and it feels like I’m only now hitting my stride.’ And my oh my is she!

Her latest project is Backsies where she shows a more erotic side of my art. Kawira initiates and creates the projects herself for the most part, but partners up with some amazing people for different things. For instance, She partnered up with Michelle (@kris.kossie) for the Sexolution stickers, and am already working on something in collaboration with Wawira (@dogme_imagery).

Our sticker pack makes the sexual request clear fun and incredibly consensual with a smile and a wink.

This series of stickers ‘nicknamed ‘The Sexolution stickers’ are meant to make sexting your partner a bit more fun and expressive. Kawira says ‘right now we mostly have eggplant and peaches emojis to stand in for things (and it’s easy enough to misunderstand these messages) but our sticker pack makes the sexual request clear, fun and incredibly consensual with a smile and a wink.’

Initially, the sticker pack started out as cards that Kawira created and gave out during AFRA Kenya’s first Sexfest in 2015. ‘‎Back then,’ she says ‘I didn’t know how to make them into a sticker pack available for use on our phones, and I didn’t really have the equipment for it. Now I have a start in figuring that out and that’s what I’m doing.’

The sticker pack is TOTALLY FREE to use on Telegram just click this link right here.

Check out Kawira on Instagram @kawiramwirichia and on Twitter with @ArtbyKawira. Check out the Backxsies stickers on the gram too!