PAINTINGS ‘SMALL THINGS’ BY A BIG TALENT: AGNES WARUGURU

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 16 September)

Agnes Waruguru brings a breath of fresh air to Nairobi’s art scene with her first solo exhibition entitled ‘Small Things to Consider’ at Circle Art Gallery. Having opened September 9 and running through October 8, Agnes’ show has the honor of being Circle Art’s first public opening since the pandemic shut it (and most everything else) down.

Visitors can only come by appointment and agree to follow all the safety precautions, including masks and all the rest. But it is worth making the effort just to see the way Circle continues to support up-and-coming young artists and appreciate their various styles of experimentation.

In Agnes’ case, she was trained to be a painter [in Kenya and the US] but chose early on to break away from the conventional approach of working on primed, stretched canvas. She prefers cottons, citing the Kenyan lasso or kitenge as the home-grown inspiration that reveals one of her ‘small things to consider’, namely her affinity for her heritage and indigenous culture. It was during her studies in California and Georgia that she realized she wanted her art to celebrate Kenyan culture and not merely emulate Western traditions and techniques.

And while she uses some acrylic paints and pastels in her art, Agnes also employs traditional skills learned from childhood such as stitching, knitting, embroidery and crocheting. At the same time, she experiments with everything from charcoal, India ink and colorful dyes to grass! She is also inclined to work with found objects, particularly the trashed netting that she found both around Nairobi and in Lamu where she went on a six-week residency in 2019.

Agnes doesn’t describe herself as an environmental artist. But her affinity with nature is apparent in much of the semi-abstract artworks in her first solo show. Consisting of paintings, drawings and a series of mono-prints that she produced in Lamu, her show reflect a refreshing spontaneity, confidence and freedom which has resulted in art that is fearlessly unconventional.

For instance, the moment you step into the gallery (or even check out her show online), you will see what looks like a clothes-line on which the artist hung assorted fabrics that could be mistaken for either rags or representative flags. Their significance is obscure yet evocative.

Much of her exhibition seems to have been inspired by her time at the Coast. For instance, it is in the first painting she created after arriving on Lamu island that she not only reveals her elation at being at the ocean and under a brilliant yellow sun. It is also in that first work that she felt compelled to paint not simply with brushes, but also with grasses that surrounded her as she painted in the open air, in ‘plein air’ style.

That same sense of joy and spontaneity comes through in much of her work, her paintings being at once atmospheric and translucent. Her colors are sun-kissed, but slightly muted as they often blend in what feels like a cross between carnival- and rainbow-hues. This is because her version of ‘priming’ her cotton consists of sequentially pouring a mixture of water, acrylic paint and dye over her fabric. After that, she allows that magical blend to take its time being absorbed and forming its own contours and organic designs. And then one can see her love of nature coming through in works like ‘On Paradise, Swamps and other lands’, ‘In reality, dreaming of palms’ and ‘Luc Rose’.

Agnes’ delicate mono-prints seem slightly too diminutive to be hung as they are on one of the gallery’s vast white walls. Nonetheless, the miniature prints that she produced, using acrylic paints on paper and pressed together with pieces of discarded industrial mesh, create a fascinating effect. Observing that she used several kinds of netting in her show, Agnes admits that her distress at seeing the trashed plastic bags and the metallic industrial mesh, led her to experiment in ingenious ways and ultimately to produce highly original art.

Meanwhile, one still has time to get to One Off Art Gallery to see Michael Musyoka’s solo exhibition entitled ‘Time and Other Constructs II’. The show carries on a philosophical conversation begun the year before by the artist at Red Hill Art Gallery where his first ‘Time and Other Constructs’ introduced his time-bound avatars.

Then on September 26^th, the show of Elias Mungora’s newest paintings opens at One Off.

Finally, don’t miss Camille Wekesa’s exhibition, ‘Lattices’ at Red Hill Art Gallery through October 18.