The unprecedented violence, coming in the wake of the Kenya Elections December 2007, left the GoDown Arts Centre deeply disturbed. Like most Kenyans, there was a perplexing sense of impotence about how to respond to the post-election mayhem in a 'meaningful way'. To play their part in a national healing process, artists in the performing and visual arts attempted to evoke the Muse with varying degrees of impact. Musicians, from both secular and gospel genres held concerts, and participated in public prayer sessions, with songs old and new, trying to remind Kenyans about the higher national ideal within which we all should also strive to realize identity and dreams.

Writers penned poetry and prose, captured well by Kwani Trust in their twin publications of literary responses to the post-election period. Kuona Trust painters and sculptors based at the GoDown were among the internally displaced persons - IDPs - having fled their residential neighborhoods. While it was clear that the Muse was as traumatized by the turn of events as the artists themselves, they nonetheless carried an exhibition of their existing works, both to raise funds for the displaced among them, but also to bring people together, because it seemed that more than anything else, at least within the walls of the GoDown, people wanted to talk, to say how they felt, to hear from their colleagues. But still, as an arts centre, the GoDown was not satisfied that it had made sufficient impact towards remembrance and reflection of the post-election violence.

And then we came upon the photographs that would lead us to curate and carry the "Kenya Burning" exhibition. In February 2008, Nick Ysenburg, a freelance photographer while discussing with the GoDown a photo project he hoped to embark on later that year, showed us images by 25-year old Boniface Mwangi taken during the violence. They were dramatic, they were horrific and real. Nick then showed us other images by a Japanese photographer, Yasuyoshi Chiba, who had been in Kisumu during the election period. Again, in Chiba's photographs, we were struck by the power of the camera to capture scenes and moments of the unbridled emotions expressed by Kenyans during that trying period - anger, pain, despair, and sorrow.

We immediately knew what the GoDown had to do. We put out a call to amateur and professional photographers to submit their visual recording of what took place. The response from photographers was generous and swift, and we cannot express enough the GoDown's appreciation to each one of the 9 photographers whose work comprised the premier "Kenya Burning" exhibition that opened at the GoDown Arts Centre in April 2008.