Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi, meanwhile, will bring a video installation with performance and photography by Ato Milinda, exploring lesbian, African and diaspora aesthetics, while Mariane Ibrahim Gallery from Seattle will show meticulous, dreamy drawings of fantastical realms by the Nigerian-born Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze.
DetailsTop spot was a dead heat at Ksh1,878,400 ($18,415) between Geoffrey Mukasa’s Post-Cubist At Home, and Rashid Diab’s large Out of Focus — the surprise of the show which exceeded its top estimate by almost Ksh1 million ($9,803).
Details…the brainchild of Danda Jaroljmek, a passionate advocate of African art and graduate of London’s Chelsea College of Art … Her solution was to set up Circle Art Agency to identify work worth selling and bring it to market. ‘We found people who wanted to buy, but it’s a question of building an audience,’ says Jaroljmek.
DetailsWith East Africa’s first Modern and Contemporary Art Auction being held in Nairobi this month, msafiri takes a closer look at four of the works to go under the hammer. In recent years the art world has taken a keen interest in African art. However most of the attention has been focused on southern and West Africa. The Circle Art Agency is keen to expose local and international collectors to the wealth of artistic talent that exists in East Africa.
DetailsLater this year Circle Art Agency is scheduled to hold Kenya’s first auction of modern art.
DetailsMichael Soi is flecked with paint when I meet him at his studio, a high, rough-walled room in a converted warehouse in Nairobi’s industrial area. Stacked against walls and tables are his large acrylic on canvas paintings in flat, bright colours: buxom women with towering Afros, leering men in uniforms and suits, corrupt coppers, fat-cat politicians, pickpockets preying on bus queues … “The contemporary art scene in Kenya is inconceivable without Soi,” says Danda Jaroljmek, a director at Nairobi’s Circle Art Agency, which markets Kenyan art.
Details“In recent years the international art world has taken a keen interest in Africa as an investment opportunity; emerging financial markets are frequently followed by emerging art markets,” says Fiona Fox at Circle Art Agency, who helped set up the Tate’s Africa committee. Her Kenya-based agency hopes to hold the country’s first art auction later this year with a retrospective of the best Kenyan works from the past 30 years “to create a buzz” and “regulate” prices.
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