ABSTRACT
The first, 'Monday Morning', orchestrated in the wake of a night's violence in Kabul, brought an unexpected message of peace in the form of 10,000 vivid, pink balloons carried through the city by volunteers. With 'Beware of Colour' in Johannesburg, decrepit, abandoned buildings – left to decay since the end of apartheid – became the centre of a conversation about the city's homelessness after pink paint was poured down their fronts. In divided Nairobi, 'Colour in Faith' brought Muslim and Christian houses of worship together to paint their buildings yellow in the name of love and tolerance. In all three cities, Kabul, Johannesburg and Nairobi, divisions, insecurity, poverty, and inequality are rampant. In each case, the cities have spatial divisions rooted in complex histories and reinforced by contemporary fear. When the installation was brought to Nairobi in 2011, a grenade attack shook the centre of the city a week before the installation was due to take place.
