A woman with her hand down a man’s trousers is not commonly considered a theme for fine art. But in Nairobi, real life is art, and artist Michael Soi paints it as he sees it. “I have lived in Nairobi all my life,” says Real Life as Art Michael, who once considered joining the military but chose art school instead. “This and that goes on in this city, and people are selective on what they want to talk about.

I try to talk about everything.” Lately, Soi’s work has centered around an extensive series on strip clubs and ART prostitution. With the objectivity and humor he brings to his art, Michael is able not just to humanize Kenya’s evercontroversial sex workers, but also to underscore the other players in the sex trade—the clients. In his paintings, he explores the stereotypes around the women who work the clubs and the streets, and the customers who support their trade. “There’s a lot of denial around these establishments,” Michael says of Nairobi’s strip clubs.

It’s certainly not a side of Nairobi that many people are keen to acknowledge, much less capture in art. But Soi has never avoided controversy. His popular “FAT CATS” series demonstrates how greed continues to impede political, social and economic development in Kenya, portraying politicians as selfish cats and greedy pigs. It was a critical success in this country and beyond. As a man whose dream is a world “full of people who tell the truth and live by it,” Michael’s no-holds-barred portrayal of Nairobi’s social-political dynamics has paid off.

His work is part of public collections in Europe and has been purchased by private collectors around the world. Even Luis Moreno Ocampo (head lawyer at the International Criminal Court) owns a Michael Soi original. But according to the artist, this is still only the beginning. “The great things are yet to come,” Michael predicts. His next series is a collaboration with another young artist: his four-year-old daughter, Malli. “I’m learning a lot from her. I totally love it. We don’t have to worry about perspective, form or anything. We do what we want and get away with it.”