Brush Tu: Handle with Care: Circle Art Gallery One

Brush Tu began as a partnership of three artists frustrated by the limitations of commercial mural work, initially forming a registered entity simply to meet practical needs like working and storage space. Over time, it evolved into a growing collective driven by a shared spirit of problem-solving and collaboration, expanding its membership and influence within the local art community.

A significant turning point came in 2016 with the creation of AIRBRUSH 1, a residency and workshop program designed to provide the kind of opportunities the founders themselves had lacked. This initiative fostered exchange between international and local artists and created space for emerging artists to develop. During this period, the collective grew significantly, both in membership and reputation.

Brush Tu continued to support artists through challenging periods, including COVID-19, and secured funding to expand its programming with AIRBRUSH 2 in 2022. Despite starting as an independent studio with minimal external funding, it has developed strong internal structures and sustained growth over more than a decade.

Part of its success lies in its role as an incubator, supporting artists and curators who have gone on to further studies, independent practices, or new collectives. As earlier members moved on, the space has continued to nurture younger artists and interns, maintaining a cycle of mentorship and development. Overall, Brush Tu has had a lasting impact through its residencies, community engagement, and ongoing support of artistic growth.

Bio
Boniface Maina (Kenya b. 1987) lives and works in Nanyuki
Maina’s primary artistic mediums are painting and drawing through which he explores inconsistencies and conflicts inherent in human interactions within physical space. His work seeks to reconcile traditional art making techniques with contemporary concerns, resulting in tension and experimentation in his artistic process. Central to Maina’s artistic practice are distorted, often exaggerated figures that embody the anatomical study of the human form. By using figures, he mirrors the daily decisions of existing within a defined space, inviting the viewer to reflect on their own physical and social interactions. Maina’s process involves layering paint and inks on varied substrates, symbolizing the foundational aspects upon which individuals expose or personalize themselves.
Select solo exhibitions include Delicate Densities, Redhill Art Gallery, Nairobi (2024); Waiting, Watching and Wishing, Circle Art Agency, Nairobi (2020); Transition, Nairobi Pioneers Gallery (2017); and Line of Inquiry, The Art Space, Nairobi (2016). Select group exhibitions include Eastern Voices: Contemporary Voices from East Africa, Addis Fine Art, London (2023); After Images, ReLe Gallery, Lagos (2023); Africa 1:1 Lab, Ca’ Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art, Venice (2023); Walking the Edge, Afriart Gallery, Kampala (2022); WOPART Art Fair, Lugano (2022, 2021); African Identities (Chapter 1), Venice (2022). Art fairs include Art021 Art Fair with ArtCN Gallery, Shanghai (2023); Art Dubai (2022); Cape Town Art Fair (2022) and East African Encounters, Cromwell Place, London (2021). Maina’s work has been featured in publications including Masters of Contemporary Art (Art Galaxie, Volumes 1 & 2); Visual Voices: The Work of Contemporary Artists in Kenya; and Echoes of Humanity: An East African Art Collection.

David Thuku (Kenyan b. 1985) lives and works in Nairobi
Thuku’s practice explores the shifting relationship between people and the spaces they inhabit. Working primarily with paper as both a sculptural and symbolic material, he develops layered compositions through processes of cutting, peeling, and reassembling - gestures that reflect on memory, fragility, and the instability of belonging. His meticulous and intuitive process draws from everyday encounters and built environments, tracing how personal and collective histories become embedded within physical space. Through repetition and reconstruction, his works oscillate between presence and absence, surface and depth.
Thuku holds a Diploma in Fine Arts from the Buruburu Institute of Fine Arts. His work has been exhibited in Nairobi at Circle Art Gallery, One Off Contemporary Art Gallery, and Red Hill Art Gallery, as well at Out of Africa Gallery in Spain. He has participated in major international art fairs including 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Drawing Now Art Fair, Also Known As Africa (AKAA) Art Fair, and Prizm Art Fair.

Michael Musyoka (Kenyan b. 1986) lives and works in Nairobi
Musyoka is a visual artist whose practice operates at the intersection of self-interrogation and social critique, using figurative painting as a site for examining the instability of identity. His work is grounded in an ongoing inquiry into the performative structures that shape human behavior, particularly the tension between private selfhood and public persona. Central to his recent work is the figure of the clown, deployed as a mutable archetype through which Musyoka navigates the dualities of care and violence, empathy and self-erasure. Through this device, the artist confronts the psychological burden of social responsibility and the ethics of relational existence within community structures. Musyoka’s paintings resist resolution, instead staging moments of internal conflict that mirror broader human conditions. His work invites viewers into a space of reflection where vulnerability, contradiction, and self-awareness remain in constant negotiation. His practice is rooted in lived experience, reflecting on empathy, leadership, and self-perception. Musyoka has exhibited internationally, including in Nairobi, Lagos, Cape Town, Paris, Linz, Venice and Shanghai, where his psychologically charged works continue to engage global audiences.

Exhibition Text
Survival is not a passive state, but an active, exhausting performance. Whether navigating a landscape of vice, stretching our physical limits, or painting our faces to hide our exhaustion, we must perform to stay afloat.In this exhibition, Boniface Maina, David Thuku, and Michael Musyoka each examine the fragile systems we abide by to exist within the world, reflecting on the contradictions between what is felt internally and what is presented outwardly. Across their practices, a shared thread emerges: the constant oscillation between vulnerability and control, self and environment, authenticity and performance.Boniface Maina begins with the social and spiritual. The imagery of clouds and sunsets carries an initial softness, a sense of refuge. Yet beneath this dreamscape lies something more unsettling: the seven deadly sins, ever-present, tugging at the hem of those ascending. Perhaps a reminder that our ideals, however sincerely held, are never immune to corruption. A recurring motif of glass in the landscapes and portraits acts as both barrier and mirror, capturing the quiet performance required to navigate a world that often suppresses vulnerability.David Thuku uses paper as both medium and metaphor, constructing intricate, layered works that mirror the complexity of human experience. His fragmented figures inhabit spaces that feel both comforting and strange, where ease is temporary and belonging is never fixed. The act of cutting, peeling, and rebuilding becomes a meditation on how identity is shaped and reshaped by the spaces we move through.Michael Musyoka moves inward, to the psychological and moral realm. Through the recurring figure of the clown, he confronts the contradictions between inner truth and outward behaviour. His work exposes the porous boundary between virtue and vice, sincerity and performance, suggesting that identity itself can become a role shaped by the expectations of others. Here, survival is entangled with compromise, and the cost of belonging is measured against the erosion of self. Together, the three artists map a continuum of human experience: from the social masks we wear, to the external spaces we inhabit and the internal negotiations that define who we are.Handle with Care invites viewers to consider the ways in which they navigate daily life. What protects us may also obscure us; what grounds us may also confine us. And within these shifting boundaries, survival becomes an act of constant adjustment and compromise.