When Italian artist Franz Cerami arrived in Kenya, he sought faces rather than familiar postcard images of landscapes or monuments.
Across coffee-growing and processing communities, he photographed about 300 workers whose labour and resilience underpin one of the world’s most valued beverages. The result is Jute Portraits, a multimedia project that places Kenya’s coffee workers at the centre of a global cultural conversation.
For Kenya’s creative sector, this is more than a visiting artist project. Cerami is one of Italy’s leading contemporary visual artists, known for blending art, technology and storytelling through digital art, video mapping and public installations.
Born in Naples, he transforms buildings and public spaces into living canvases. His work has been exhibited internationally, and he has been appointed three times as an ambassador of Italian Design in the World by Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
That such an artist has chosen Kenya’s coffee value chain as his subject, is significant. It is a recognition that the stories of farmers, pickers, processors, scientists, exporters and workers are not peripheral to culture; they are culture.
They are the people who hold together an economic, agricultural and human story that connects rural Kenya to global markets, and Kenya to Italy.
The project was conceived as part of Italy’s National Day celebrations in Kenya, under the leadership of the Ambassador of Italy to Kenya and Seychelles, H.E. Vincenzo Del Monaco. For the Ambassador, Jute Portraits is more than an exhibition. It is an act of cultural diplomacy, rooted in the shared love of coffee and the deeper relationship between the two countries.
“Italy’s National Day is also a celebration of the ties between our countries through culture and people-to-people connections,” says Ambassador Del Monaco.
While Italy is known for its coffee culture and Kenya for its coffee, Jute Portraits shifts the focus to the people behind every cup.
Cerami photographed Kenyan workers across the coffee value chain, then reimagined the images using painting, watercolor, graphite and digital techniques to create animated portraits and large-scale projections.
The title refers to the jute sacks used to transport coffee, while also symbolising the journeys of the people and landscapes behind it.
“The first thing I can say is Angalia hapa, look here,” Cerami recalls, referring to the words he used while photographing people during his journey across Kenya. “Behind every cup of coffee are many hands and many stories.”
In one of the most moving moments of the project, Cerami photographed a 95-year-old woman whose face, strength and smile stayed with him long after he returned to Italy.
Kenya inspired him not only through its landscapes but also its colour, people and emotion, which shaped the installation’s visual language.
The project has already transformed Nairobi into a public gallery, with large-scale portraits projected onto buildings and public spaces. By bringing art beyond traditional galleries, it places Kenyan coffee workers at the centre of an international artistic conversation.
Supported by the Italian Embassy, the Italian Cultural Institute, UNIDO and coffee-sector partners, the portraits are expected to travel to major cultural and institutional venues in Kenya and beyond.