Kirinyaga. Sacred roots, living identity

Kirinyaga. Sacred roots, living identity is the first major original exhibition promoted by the CAM Scientific Committee, realised on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the foundation of the’Consolata Missions Institute. The route winds its way through the Temporary Exhibition Hall of the recently inaugurated CAM to enhance the impressive ethnographic, natural and photographic heritage collected by missionaries in more than a century of activity around the world.

The focus of the exhibition is Kirinyaga, the original name of the Mount Kenya, considered a sacred mountain by the people Kikuyu, the largest ethnic group in Kenya. The exhibition presents over one hundred original objects: utensils for everyday use, instruments for divination and traditional medicine, spirit-scavengers, ritual weapons, snuff boxes and much more. Among the rarest exhibits is the Gicandi, an ancient gourd rattle used to recite an oral poem of riddles, a symbol of the transmission of collective memory.

Via documents, historical photographs, missionary testimonies and a original footage by Diego Diaz Morales, the exhibition tells the profound relationship between cultural identity, spirituality and nature that characterises the Kikuyu worldview. In this symbolic universe, Kirinyaga is the home of Ngai, the Creator God, and living under the gaze of the mountain means inhabiting a space charged with sacredness and community significance.

The exhibition is intended as a immersive journey in the Kikuyu world, capable of showing how the cultural roots, far from being a limitation, are bridges for intercultural dialogue. A rich calendar of events accompanies the exhibition: thematic meetings on women, traditional medicine, literature, arts, film and missionary photographyas well as workshops for families and schools.