Agnes Waruguru treats painting as a site and process for exploring the materiality of objects and their capacity to act as markers of identity and carriers of personal histories. She works predominantly on cotton, using dyeing, pouring and spraying alongside brushwork. These painterly processes are combined with acts of making learnt and inherited from the women in her life. Beadwork, sewing, needlework, embroidery and knitting are all incorporated in her work, intimately connecting aspects of personal identity with traditions of women’s work.
Waruguru received a BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design, USA. Her work has been exhibited in America, the Ivory Coast, France, the Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey and Kenya. She has participated in residencies in Kenya, at the Saba Artists Residency in Lamu and in Sydney, Australia. Waruguru participated in the inaugural edition of the Stellenbosch Triennale, South Africa in 2020 and had her first solo show Small Things to Consider at Circle Art Gallery later that same year. In 2022 she was nominated for the Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst Prize and showed at the 22nd Biennial Sesc–Videobrasil in Sao Paulo in 2023. She recently completed a residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. She participated in the 69th Biennale di Venezia entitled 'Foreigners Everywhere' curated by Adriano Pedrosa.
Waruguru had her second solo exhibition at Circle, What the Water Left Behind, in December 2024 and was featured in The Artsy Vanguard: Young Artists to Watch, an annual feature highlighting the most promising artists working today. This year she is participating in The Roundness of Loss at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Rememory at Garage Rotterdam, and the Past Is Just the Prologue exhibition at Lis10 Gallery in Hong Kong. Her work is included in the following collections: the Ford Foundation Collection, The African Arts Trust Collection, the Africa First Collection, the ARAK Collection, the Enasoit Collection, the Shulting Art Collection, and Collection INELCOM in Madrid. In 2026, she will have solo exhibitions at Casa Masaccio in Italy and at Sanatorium Gallery in Istanbul.
