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 December 2024 and was featured in The Artsy Vanguard Young Artists to Watch 2024 list; an annual feature highlighting the most promising artists working today. This year she was part of the Past is just the Prologue exhibition at Lis10 Gallery in Hong Kong and in May took part in 1-54 New York with Lis10 Gallery.
Her work is included the following collections, Ford Foundation Collection, The African Arts Trusts Collection, the Africa First Collection, the ARAK Collection, Enasoit Collection and Shulting Art Collection.
