Antifragile: Circle Art Gallery

Austine Adika (Kenyan, b. 1986)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Austine Adika creates intriguing and strange alien-like sculptures. Combining unlikely materials and colours and surprising spatial arrangements, his composite forms relate to everyday life whilst also reaching beyond themselves.

Adika’s practice moves between material and medium in response to the times and spaces that he inhabits. Using carving, casting, welding and assemblage, elements of traditional sculptural methods combine with aspects of his training as a woodworker, metal smith and furniture maker.

Adika’s work featured in the group exhibition Various Small Fires, Circle Art Gallery, 2021.

"If a viewer stops for just a moment to view and reflect on a piece I have created, then I have succeeded in my work." - Austine Adika

Natnael Ashebir, (Ethiopian, b. 1995)

Lives and Works in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Natnael is one of the most exciting young artists to emerge from the Ethiopian visual arts scene in recent years. Now based in Addis Ababa, he received BFA from Alle school of fine art and design 2021, Diploma from Entoto Polytechnic College 2016 and Abyssinia Fine Art School (2013). Throughout his latest body of work, Natnael merges form in a meditative exploration of layers of life and inwardness. His artworks are not only about urbanization and social structure; rather, they are immersive experience of time and space. He works across a variety media including painting, digital art, drawing and photography. His work has been exhibited in Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria. Natnael was a second prize winner of the Emerging Painting Invitational Prize (EPI2022) organized by African Art Galleries Association (AAGA). He currently live and work in Ethiopia.

Titled Layers, this body of works greatly refer to the ideas and what the specters of urbanization encompasses through abstract images. In the series, I attempt to explore the various layers drawn closer to our experience in the urban context apparent through forms of hegemony, social structure, culture, historical moments and so on. The intricate relationship that these forms bear does often manifest their ability to isolate us from some aspect of existence and at times to bring us together and in liquidate us with various integral aspect of our very existence in the urban context. Accordingly, my works proffer me the chance to feel, experience and contemplate on what urbanization avails to our time and by extension to the layers in our life. The experience of passing through such a journey of contemporaneity is serving me to explore the means to search and to find beauty in the imperfection, in the impermanence and in the incompleteness of a chaotic life. To do so, the visuals in my works contain spontaneity along with articulated expressions about layers of life through the forms, color and texture that are kind of reassembled and juxtaposed to create complex images and imaginations about urbanization’s weight.

Shilpi Deb (Kenyan, b. 1995)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Shilpi Deb received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai, India.

Her practice examines the continuous and fragile idea of the self which she technically responds to through processes of repetitive light layering, blurring borders between the background and the figures, porous stippling and loose grids. Invested in the process of working through the theoretical complexities of self with the same rigour as the moving towards a finished artwork, Deb considers questions such as; how is identity collected and accumulated, what is innate, and what is consciously added or unintentionally habitual by way of conditioning collapsing the different layers without flattening the form.

Her work has been exhibited in Kenya at the National Museum, Kioko Art Gallery, Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Talisman and abroad in India and Takeo-Japan and has been featured in The Kenya Art Diaries 2020.

Jonathan Gathaara Sölanke Fraser (Kenyan, b. 1995)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Jonathan Gathaara Sölanke Fraser uses drawing as a means to engage with the world around him through a varied approach that includes observational sketching, plant pressing, digital image collection and writing. This multifarious interaction with his environment strives towards a more internal and intuitive “knowing”: one born less of experience and learning, and more of dreaming.

Fraser’s energetic and enigmatic drawings seek to complicate meaning and create new relationships between objects and ideas. Disparate elements in the drawing field are allowed to take up similar qualities in space, eschewing their typical contexts. The drawing field itself is broken down so that a conventional approach to looking and understanding is revised. Fraser invites the viewer to consider the transformations brought by shifts in the conditions of encounter or presentation. This process of de-contextualization is aided by the repetition of certain motifs and objects within and across compositions, extending them through space and time. This reiteration and multiplication emphasizes the contingent nature of meaning and its dependency on spatial and temporal relations.

Fraser studied Fine Art at Kenyatta University. In 2021 his solo exhibition There Is A Time and A Place was held at Circle Art Gallery. He has shown in numerous group exhibitions in Nairobi including: Fictions, Circle Art Gallery, 2022; I Will See What I Want to See, Circle Art Gallery, 2019; If Not Now, Cave Bureau, 2018; Line: The Basic Element, One Off Contemporary Art Gallery, 2018; Stranger Times, Circle Art Gallery, 2017; Anatomy of Me, The Art Space, 2017.

More information about Jonathan Frasers practise can be found on jonathan-fraser.com

Ian Gichohi (Kenyan, b. 1997)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Ian Gichohi is a photographer living and working in Nairobi, Kenya. In his photography, Gichohi aspires to a painterly softness and sensitivity to his subjects, creating captivating images across the genres of still life, landscape, and portrait photography. With place as a central theme, his work is an exploration of our relationships with the immediate environment. He uses texture, contrast, colour, and composition to illuminate the ways in which objects around us can offer a glimpse into the ways we live. He recently showed his work at The African Arts Trust by Nairobi open studios in 2023 and is currently a student of architecture here in Nairobi.

James Kagima (Kenyan, b. 1998)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

James Kagima is an artist and designer. At an early age, Kagima was drawn to Catholic religious art and symbolism as seen in the stained glass windows, sculptures and paintings in churches he and his family frequented. His early influences also stemmed from picture books and comics, influences still seen in his work today.

In 2016, as he pursued a degree in Architecture, Kagima also ventured into pencil portraiture, and through the Safari Mentoring Arts Program began to work in different media which he then incorporated into his practice.

He has previously exhibited at Art installation at the National Museum, Affordable art show in 2022 and 2020 at the national museum and the Postcard Africa group exhibition at Alliance Francais, Nigeria in 2022.

Daudi Kaggwa (Ugandan, b. 1995)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Daudi Kaggwa is a visual artist working across various creative disciplines. He graduated from the University of Cape Town with a Bachelor in Fine Art (Hons) with a background in photography and sculpture. Interested in abstraction as a form of visual storytelling and paying close attention to colour and composition, Kaggwa currently primarily works in painting.

Anita Kavochy (Kenyan, b. 1993)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Kavochy Anita is a Kenyan artist born in Kibera who primarily draws, paints, and experiments on different mediums and materials. Her work seeks to re/cover the layers of emotions that constitute the self and the relation to the world, the work questions the notion of home and belonging. Kavochy studied at BuruBuru Institute of Fine Art in 2014 before joining Maasai Mbili Artist Collective in the same year. Her practice began in collective learning and working alongside Maasai Mbili Artists Collective, participating in exhibitions, and workshops both individually and collaboratively.

Peter Kariuki (Kenyan, b. 1993)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Peter Kariuki is a self-taught artist, who's early inspiration came from watching his by his grandfather make quick sketches about everyday life. He took up art as a full-time career in 2016 after completing a bachelor's degree in graphics communication and advertising at Moi University and later meeting Michael Wafula who has been his mentor.

His work revolves around techniques of printmaking, emulating screen printing and etching processes and breaking away from the conventional procedures to discover new ones through a range of experiments with homemade tools and other found items, to achieve different textures on different mediums. The works are not print multiples but rather stand-alone pieces of their kind, built up with layers of paint and ink which is then scratched off the surface with nails and blades creating marks and texture and at the same time unearthing underlying profiles of color to the point of perforating a medium and then blocking it from behind with another medium. Paint is applied on the surface using cards, brushes and screen-printing mesh to create a velvety fabric texture, which acts as a symbol of the different identities' humans put on.

As all these procedures unfold, he seeks to unveil the hidden forces behind character, those that push human beings from within to behave and act the way that they do. Peter Kariuki’s images are born out of personal experiences, imaginations, dreams and fantasies expressing his personal meditations in quest to understand why things happen the way they do in life. Inside the pictures therefore lies other vague pictures giving insight of his self-perceptions. His portraiture examines profiles through semi-abstraction, employing mark makings, surface scratching and bleaching of pigments. He seeks to explore themes of right and wrong, beauty and ugliness, hard work and laziness, struggle and hope, individuality and its contributing factors. The works are soul searching meditations of mankind’s way of thinking. Peter Kariuki has participated in the Kenya National Museum Society ‘Affordable art show’ 2017 and won.

Masoud Ibrahim Kibwana (Tanzanian, b. 1988)

Lives and works in Dar es salaam, Tanzania

Concerned with politics, equality, intellectual transformation and societal change, Masoud Ibrahim Kibwana works in painting and installation, often incorporating discarded fabric into the work as a way to amplify visual textures within the paintings and create immersive environments in his installation work.

Kibwana has exhibited with Rangi Gallery in Tanzania and participated in various workshops locally and abroad.

Vincent Kimeu (Kenyan, b. 2001)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Part of the Mukuru Art club founded by fellow artist Adam Massava for the youth in the Mukuru kwa Njenga, Vincent is a self-taught artist who works predominantly in painting. He is inspired by his surroundings, his travels through Kenya and his experience in daily life. This body of work specifically reflects the landscapes of his home Ukambani known for its mixed communities and varied landscapes that range from semi- arid to desert landscapes. He has shown extensively in group exhibitions including One off contemporary gallery and Banana Hill Gallery in 2022.

Wanini Kimemiah (Kenyan, b. 1995)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Wanini Kimemiah is a community-taught, cross-disciplinary visual artist and writer from Nairobi. Their practice spans lens-based art, textile art, wirework, painting, collage and alternative photographic processes such as cyanotypes. They draw inspiration from their educational background in genomic sciences, as well as their interactions with people and objects in day-to-day life. They explore themes such as embodiment, presence and perception, time, and have a fascination with the uncanny, otherworldly and sometimes eerie experiences one may encounter as they go about the business of living.

Her works are an attempt to turn ordinary objects and situations into a surreal experience. There is much wonder to be found by looking at what one is already so used to in a different light. In seeking out unfamiliarity within the familiar Kimemiah invites the viewer to think more deeply about the things they might take for granted, even though it might be uncomfortable, perhaps even frightening to realise that something can be so much bigger, stranger and more intricate than previously thought.

Zephaniah Lukamba (Kenyan)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Zephaniah Lukamba latest series of paintings depict hyper-realistic scenes of vehicles in transit, rendered intricately in oil and acrylic on canvas. Tapping into the familiarity of these everyday scenes, Lukamba's use of tone evokes a sense of nostalgia and deja vu in his viewers.

In the last seven years, Lukamba has exhibited at the National Museum of Kenya (2016), The Kenya Art Fair (2017), Mtaani Exhibition (2017 & 2018, 2022), Manjano Exhibition (2020), ZPAP Kierat gallery & Sztuki Schowek gallery in Poland (2021-2022), One-Off Gallery (2020 - 2023), Almasi Art gallery (2023) among others. Currently, he is pursuing a Master’s in Fine Art and Design at Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya.

Wanjohi Maina (Kenyan, b. 1986)

Live and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Wanjohi Maina is a self-taught artist based in Nairobi. Maina began practicing art full-time in 2015, after quitting his job as a pump attendant. He joined the Kuona Artists’ Collective and has been based there since 2017. Whilst Maina started out as a painter, his practice has expanded to include printmaking, drawing and sculpture. He has evolved his skills working individually as well through assisting artists, including Peterson Kamwathi, Dennis Muraguri, David Thuku, Kaloki Nyamai and Longinos Nagila, on various projects.

Maina has exhibited his work in group exhibitions at One Off Contemporary Art Gallery, The Attic, Circle Art Gallery and the French Cultural Centre in Nairobi. In 2022, a solo presentation of his work was featured by Circle Art Gallery on Artsy online, and in 2021 he was featured in Various Small Fires, a group exhibition at Circle Art Gallery.

HAWKERS’ REPUBLIC (2021, ongoing)

Hawkers' Republic is an ongoing body of work in which Maina focuses his eye on the street vendors, or hawkers, as they’re commonly referred to. This work is an extension of earlier drawings and print-based works on the same subject. The works are made on steel sheets, from which he cuts out the silhouettes, then etches in the details, working with acrylic highlighter and spray paints for highlights and to describe the different objects. Hawkers are a ubiquitous part of Kenya's major urban areas, and form a significant part of the country’s ‘informal’ economy.

“As a cyclist, I am forced to jostle for space with these ‘friends of fate’ as they ply their trade in gridlocked traffic of our capital. I am fascinated with how creative they get while trying earning their daily dues. You can buy anything, from fresh vegetables, electronics and household equipment, to toys from the window of your vehicle. If I were not a visual artist, perhaps I would be that guy hassling you to buy my wares on the windscreens and windows of your vehicles…” - Wanjohi Maina

Ashenafi Mestika, (Ethiopian b. 1987)

Lives and Works in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Ashenafe received a Diploma in Fine Art from Entoto Technical and Vocational Education Training College. In 2020 he graduated from Alle School of Fine Art & Design with a specialization in painting. For the past decade, Ashenafi has participated in different group exhibitions in Addis Ababa. Ashenafi enjoys the interpretation of socio-political happenstance into visual form. He uses sketches as a starting point for his creative process. He then reforms, deforms, magnifies, crops, and overlaps these sketches, replacing visual elements to translate and adapt the information he perceives from his surroundings through his different senses. His practice spans various media including drawing, painting, photography and video art.

Derrick Munene, artist name M-Nine (b. 1995) 

M-Nine is a visual artist based in Nairobi, Kenya. M-nine developed an interest in drawing at a very young age which led him to pursue interior design at the Technical University. In 2018, he joined Dust Depo studio and under the mentorship of Patrick Mukabi explored a variety of media before primarily executing his work in paper collage. M-nine looks to document dailiness and celebrate the diversity of his environment.

Antony Nganga (Kenyan, b. 1993)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Antony Nganga is a visual artist who uses drawing as his primary medium. Nganga responds to the natural environment through intricate and sprawling line drawings in ink on paper. He is a graduate of Buruburu Institute of Fine Art (BIFA).

He has previously exhibited at RedHill Art Gallery in Nairobi.

Victor Nderitu (Kenyan, b 1996)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Born in Ruiru town Victor Nderitu is a self taught artist who has been painting since 2014 after his interest waspeaked by a commission request. In the same year he joined Kenyatta University to pursue a Bachelor of arts in fine artist. Currently working as a building painter, he continues to pursue art inspired by what he sees daily in the urban scapes he traverses. He has participated in The Manjano art competition and shown his work at Ubuntu , The Affordable art show[s], FOTA ISK exhibition, U.M gallery, Zawadi art International, Moko Mach exhibition by Little gallery and Muthaiga golf club auction. In 2023 he participated in the Art Of the City completion by ArtCaffe when he was the second runner up.

Romeo Niyingena (Rwandan, b. 1999)

Lives and works in Kigali, Rwanda

Romeo is a multidisciplinary artist based in Kigali, primarily working in acrylic and oils on canvas. His love for art led him to pursue a degree in graphic design enrolling at the Ecole d’arts de NYUNDO, graduating in 2018.

Like many of his contemporaries, he is fascinated by the diversity in the world and his exploration of the different cultures, especially on the continent has been his biggest inspiration. Creating wonderful poetic landscapes of people and places, each work hold a narrative ready to be explored.

Romeohas has been in several exhibitions including, Glory to My Black Skin, solo art exhibition at Izihirwe arts, 2022 Rwanda, Imagine We at Np Art Gallery and The Obsesson a solo show at Indiba arts space Rwanda in 2023.

Margaret Ngigi (Kenyan, b. 1996)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Margaret Ngigi is a visual artist, photographer, and filmmaker living and working in Kenya. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Film Production and Directing from the United States International University of Africa (USIU). Ngigi has been practising photography since 2015 and considers her work to be a personal visual diary documenting the complexities of coming of age as a woman, and further inviting audiences to interrogate their own personal experiences through various life transitions. Themes in her work include the roles of women in marriage in her series Mke Mwema and more broadly the position of women in society in the series Murky Waters.

In 2022, Ngigi won the East African Photography Awards and in 2020 was nominated for the Photo London Emerging Photographer of the Year. Internationally she has exhibited her work Photo Basel and Photo London, and worked with galleries AKKA Project.

In 2023 she presented a solo exhibition Forever is not ours at One Off Contemporary Gallery, Nairobi.

Brian Ocholla (Kenyan, b. 1996)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Brian Ocholla's intimate still-lifes reflect daily living, spotlighting everyday domestic objects in his surroundings while growing up in Kibera, Nairobi.

Ocholla began his artistic journey when he was seven years old by drawing cartoons with colour pencils on his school books. Having pursued an artistic career, despite warnings from him parents to focus on academic subjects, In 2021,Ocholla won the Nairobi County Manjano Art Competition. Ocholla studied art at Kenyatta University, receiving his B.E.d in Art and Design. He works predominately with oils on canvas and board from his studio in Nairobi.

Churchill Ongere (Kenyan, b. 1991)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Churchill Ongere’s work explores the politics of human relations within contexts of history, decolonization, conflict, and reconciliation. In his presentations, Ongere eschews explicitly political or anecdotal imagery and instead relies on quotidian objects and their movements and interactions within undefined space. Chairs, stools, boxes, sheep, clothes and fruits – suspended, drifting, tumbling – function as ambiguous metaphors whose interpretations rely on the viewer and how/where they situate themselves within the work.

In 2022, he was a grantee of the inaugural Artists and Writers Fellowship to Venice Biennale by Wangechi Mutu Studio and was a Speculative Fiction Fellow at Berkman Klein Center’s Digital ID Research Sprint.

The submitted works are part of an ongoing series illustrating happiness and recovery after moments of crisis.

Oscar Osumo (Kenyan, b. 1993)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Oscar Osumo began his practice primarily working on commissioned portraits in graphite, charcoal and watercolours. Osumo is trained as a quantity surveyor but pivoted to pursue a career in the visual arts instead. In 2018, he began working on personal projects using photography and other mixed media techniques to draw connections between people and the built environment with particular attention to urban life.

Josue Pierre ( Rwandan, b. 2001)

Lives and works in Musanze, Rwanda

Josue Pierre graduated from the Department of Sculpture and Ceramics at Ecole d’Arts de Nyundo. Inspired by black culture, Pierre looks to document social life through figurative painting exploring themes of identity, belonging and connection. His work often features vibrant colours, bold shapes, plant life and other subtle details that create more nuanced narratives within his work.

Virginiah Wakianda (Kenyan)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Wakianda is a multidisciplinary artist and fashion designer. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Fashion Design and Marketing from Kenyatta University. Her work focuses on the socio-cultural structures of colourism within society and the resulting biases.

Wakianda was part of the art collective Ziwa Zambarau before venturing into her independent practice. She has participated in various group exhibitions such as the Sustainable Together Call by the Goethe-Institute Johannesburg in partnership with the British Council 2023, Women & Art in the Digital Age Exhibition 2023, the Travelling-Art-In-Corona-Times Exhibition Sweden 2021, the Kampala Art Biennale 2020 and the Kenya Art Fair 2017.

In 2022, she had her first solo exhibition at Goethe-Institut Nairobi as part of the Sasa Nairobi Series.

Tehila Wangeci (Kenyan, b. 2000)

Lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya

Tehila Wangeci is a self-taught artist currently pursuing a diploma in procurement and logistics at KCA University. Wangeci continues to nurture her artistic practice working primarily in abstraction using bold forms, muted colours and gestural marks in her compositions favouring the non-representational to the narrative.