Agnes Waruguru: What the Water Left Behind: Circle Art Gallery
"I really want people to relate to the work, that it has an effect on you, to be surrounded and transported to a specific place… assembling fragments where all the works bounce off each other and give each other context, a landscape of sorts"
What the Water Left Behind, Agnes Waruguru’s second solo presentation at Circle brings together a series of works created over the past two years alongside new works from 2024. Spanning textile, drawing, printmaking, ceramics, glass, needlework, natural pigment-making and installation, Waruguru’s approach is an assemblage of fragments that when read together mould an immersive space that is at once restful, hopeful and contemplative.
“When making these works I always feel like more could happen. It’s like holding your breath. The work could surprise you. Not all the space is taken up so there is enough room to feel things moving and also for the work to continue extending itself. I want to create a feeling of being suspended, of being in the middle of something.”
The exhibition is named after a series of glassworks Waruguru made during their residency at Rijksakademie, evoking multiple allusions to water, with glass itself resembling water and sharing some similar physical properties. In What the Water Left Behind, Waruguru channels water as an active messenger, maker and healer, while also holding possibilities for water as an archive. The large-scale installations and other works serve as an instrument for rememory, cleansing and meditation, each accompanying action considered slowly and with care.
In the making of the textile and paper works, the emergent gesture is a controlled pouring of salt and water on the surface as a primer to receive natural pigments, acrylic paints, inks and watercolour. What follows is a push and pull in which layers of gentle washes, and more concentrated beads of pigment pool, blend and accumulate to create illusory landscapes, vast and open. When experienced at scale, the monumental installations surround the viewer and bring about a bodily affect that makes it possible to alter mood, and mental states, activating a slowdown and a space for listening and waiting.
Waruguru’s work is often connected to their lived experience, reflecting on human interaction with the earth and relating this with their inner self. Expanding on themes that continue to be of interest to them such as; time, traditional cultural practices, memory, grief, spirituality and elemental sensibilities, they remain attuned and sensitive to their environment and through these interactions, conjure new dreamscapes for us all to inhabit.
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.
In 2024 Waruguru was featured in The Artsy Vanguard. Young Artists to Watch list; an annual feature highlighting the most promising artists working today. In 2025 she was part of the Past is just the Prologue exhibition at Lis10 Gallery in Hong Kong and took part in 1-54 New York with Lis10 Gallery. 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.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.
