Season's Greetings!

I know I haven’t posted for a minute save for updating on art and studio matters. But where else do I get to postulate and ruminate on my life. Let me take this moment to wish everyone happy holidays! The end of the year is nigh; 2022 looms over the horizon, and as always, it’s time to reflect the year that was.Taking stock of lessons learned, opportunities seized, failed states of being, growth, and an all-round illusion of some semblance of order. I woke up saying I need to name five things that I’m grateful for each day. Just five. There’s something about naming them that not only makes one thankful but also one gets to pause and really think. In that way it becomes a way of appreciating even the most mundane moments. While it is easy to define our lives by what we do, these times have proven that is no longer a viable option. Reflections are very illuminating calling to mind my shortcomings and failings. These reflections allow me to appreciate beyond my work, circles of support that I have around me. Family and friendships not necessarily the one you’re born into but those whom we have adopted and have remained true through adversity, joy, at this journey we call life. 

(When not in the studio you'll find me outdoors hiking the trails)

I ushered this year uncertain of what it might entail, after the year that was 2020 a year plagued by a pandemic which by the way is still ongoing that utterly shuffled the way we do life. By this I mean the illusion that we somehow had a semblance of control on our lives. One thing I was certain of, was not to fall back to habits that were both time consuming and unproductive. I had to narrow down what exactly it is I wanted to achieve by the close of the year. I confess I am not one of those people who always ushers a new year with a plethora of resolutions, I mean it might work for some but for me every new year is an opportunity to complete ongoing projects or the completion of set goals. That way I am not fooling myself and I can realise my projects and find balance in both my work and personal life.

(The studio)

As we come to the close of the year gratitude rings in my mind. I’m grateful for mistakes I’ve made and they are many but more the lessons learned. I’m grateful for my solo show that was three years in the making amidst the times we are living in. Collaborated on a VR project that got selected for the Labiennale de Venezia, exhibited at the museum, was part of the tusk lion trail, a global project that aimed to highlight the ongoing threats to the survival of the lion population in Africa. Even with all these projects and more it is astonishing to discover I have a penchant to complain. Realizing I am, my own worst critic, I hope to eschew moving forward from this proclivity. I hope to remedy this by taking a moment to appreciate it all. This year with its wins and losses where sometimes the losses seems to engulf everything. Grief. What is grief? But a part of life. I buried many people this year. I mourned and yet there didn’t seem to be an end to the mourning. Grief hit different having lost an uncle who was like an adoptive father to me, it was one of those moments. Grief coming in unexpectedly, as I accepted the seasons of my heart with its infinite depths boundless and measureless. I grieved failed relations mourning the possibilities I hoped they would be. We continue to mourn for ourselves, the self we are constantly shedding.

(A Wild infection of a Wildly Shaken Public Mind, Solo Exhibition 2021)

Every end of the year this ruminations culminate in not carrying this baggage into the new year. Hoping to arrive at it with optimism. The remedy for this, gratitude. Gratitude even if the mundane moments feel so trivial making them more worth celebrating. So, as we enter the holiday season, I reflect on all those who don’t get to celebrate it for one reason or another. Whether we are alone or with the family we’re born into or adopted, the best way to celebrate the holidays is to be at peace with oneself within the spaces we find ourselves in. The seasons mantra, “peace and goodwill” to all men resounds most times goodwill barely hanging by a thread. Peace within ourselves allows the goodwill to spread to our loved ones. So, while we celebrate this festive season, I hope that everyone wherever we are, are loved and are loving in a small way and are able to extend friendship and love by paying it forward. These times that call for little moments shared between some grilled meat, the buffet, the loud laughter at the family table while my eyes scan across the room at faces I haven’t seen in a while sometimes since we ushered the year; this tradition where we gather for the holidays, each holiday we seem to be fewer and fewer at the table or when we come together for a funeral or impromptu gathering. This manner of getting together for those fleeting moments we engage and try to fit a whole year into conversations. Loud animated conversations where it feels like everyone is talking over everyone at the same time, music humming in the background and when everything has quieted down, we come to an understanding and are understood in whatever we are trying to say. Everyone somehow hearing and being heard; or sometimes we’re sitting on the couch completely stuffed and while you’re in a food coma and can barely remember the conversations a thought flashes across your mind catching you off guard that you laugh with reckless abandon in contentment. 

                                     

(Behind the Scenes IL Dubbio A VR Project 2021)

Wherever we find ourselves, let the most minutiae in the sounds of laughter, running footsteps, fading echoes of conversations in this festive season be the guiding light ushering us into a new year. Because who are we save for these fleeting moments that we so often take for granted. I wish you all love and when the curtain unveils the dawn of the new year, I hope to find you all on the other side.

Happy holidays!

Artworlds Podcast

https://artworlds-podcast.net/podcast/episode-3-beatrice-wanjiku/

https://www.artsy.net/artist/beatrice-wanjiku

In Other News...

https://www.elle.com/it/magazine/storie-di-donne/a38023227/artiste-per-africa/ 

Excerpt of A Review

Beatrice goes straight to the core of our being, bypassing the superficialities and diving into the common features of being human, like bones, blood, veins and other guts. She has a way of striping her subjects down, literally to the bare bones so one has little choice but to journey with her into those interior parts.

She has taken us into those mental interiors in her previous shows. But often I’d felt I was heading towards a ‘heart of darkness’ where some inner sadness was revealed through her art. 

But there’s a radical shift in the artist’s perspective in this show that she entitles “A Wild Infection of the  Wildly Shaken Public Mind.” to continue reflecting on the deeper challenges of being human. Only now, there is far more brightness, hope, and possibility in her art. 

Restless in Rest X 2021

In her show, there is one feature of the human form that repeats itself in multiple iterations. (Someone suggested her repeated forms reminded them of Monet’s multiple beach scenes which he painted and repaints at all hours of day and night.) And that is the ribcage. I find that an apt metaphor since Beatrice seems to be dealing with a delicate subject, namely, what it means to be safe and secure in these times of COVID. Yet in a brief interview with the artist at her show’s opening, Beatrice said she began this body of work well before COVID-19 hit the world stage. “I began this series in 2018,” she confessed. 

The ribcage itself is a protected zone, a brilliant structure designed to protect precious organs like the lungs, heart, and liver from events that could ‘shake the public mind’. “For me, human bodies are a metaphor for mental frames of reference,” says Beatrice whose art seems to have a larger, more universal message. It is that irrespective of one’s skin, facial features, body size, or gender, the human condition is one that is shared by all. Working with darkened hues, especially shades of black and dark blue. But now, she also includes works where the brightness of her hues literally explode on her canvas. And as those explosions take place in works where pelvic bones are prominent, I had to ask what that light source was meant to signify?

Recalled to life II 2021

“It’s about re-birth,” Beatrice says simply. “It’s also about hope and new possibilities,” she adds. With that major hint in mind, I begin to reevaluate my views of all her paintings. All have dazzling moments of brightness, be they yellow, bright orange, blood red or even white.The blood red might suggest violence, but for Beatrice, it would seem that the colour affirms renewed life, energy, and power. 

She has a unique way of looking at the anatomy of the mind. For instance, in one painting, what appears to be positioned like a womb, is painted in blacks and blues. But Beatrice explains that all the growth inside the womb goes on in darkness, waiting for the time to be right, and a new being is born. But that’s another phase, another painting. So when she says her work is about journeying in life, Beatrice is reclaiming a life of hope and rebirth, when darkness is only a bridge to something brighter and more full of possibility.

Excerpt Written for the Business Daily (published 3 September 2021) by Margaretta Wa Gacheru

Currently At The Redhill Gallery

The exhibition currently showing at the Redhill Art Gallery until 31 October, shows work from their collection from two Exhibitions, “Divine Discontent” (2015) and “Mourning a Memory” (2018).

In “Divine Discontent” (A Straitjacket Series), The premise of the work is that, “People believe in certain ways, predetermined manners often according to pre-described norms of society. Anything counter to this is normally punished whereas “normalcy” is encouraged and rewarded.

In the series the “Strait Jacket” is a recurring motif, a metaphor, exploring boundaries, the idea of boundaries (social and self) and imposed system of thought. The work examines how we are anchored by social conditioning and expectation, always bound at the expense of what we desire, a reflection of an outward expression of our inner and intimate existence.

Resume your Flesh and Form V (2018🔴

“Mourning A Memory” (2018) was/is an examination  of a time in decline and our in/ability to compartmentalize our lives, how we change/evolve and are forced to adapt in order to navigate our social spaces.  Informed by social, political situations happening both locally and globally the series was an interrogation of our lives and as an estrangement and reinventing of self.

The similarity in the work is the constancy of the gaze that is repeatedly directed inward, an excavation of the soul to better understand ourselves and the spaces we occupy 

Featured work:

Resume your flesh and Form V(2018)

Acrylic/Pastel/Mixed Media on Canvas

150cm x 100cm

Kesho Kutwa (The Day After Tomorrow)

Kesho Kutwa

11 September - 15 October 2021

Kesho Kutwa – "The Day After Tomorrow", heralds re-birth and renewal in a post-pandemic Kenya. The exhibition explores life in a post-pandemic existence. 

The work I submitted in this exhibition explore the duality of the state of being and the natural intrinsic state of fulfillment and happiness. The gaze is directed inwards, and continues on towards the expression of our individual states. 

Out of This Mess II (2021)🔴

IL Dubbio Episode 2

"Il Dubbio", is a VR library of artists’ doubts, an exploration of the timeless relationship between artistic expression and doubt, at the Venice VR expanded which is the Virtual Reality section of the 78th Venice International Film Festival of Labiennale di Venezia.

In Episodio II, reflects on the loss of my mother and how the loss informed my work and my identity as an artist. The experience brings to light that infamous feeling that we don’t speak of but which often defines creative work. 

Directed by Matteo Lonardi

Production: Reframe VR (Francesco Lonardi)

Running time: 7'

Language: English

Country: Spain, Italy 

Main Cast: Beatrice Wanjiku

Screenplay: Matteo Lonardi, Rafael Pavon

Cinematographer: Javier Garcia Lajara

Music: Vittorio Giampietro

Sound: Jose Luis Lara

Platform: Viveport

Devices:HTC Vive/Vive Pro/Vive Pro 2 HTC Vive Cosmos Oculus Rift/Rift S/Quest w/Link Valve Index

A Wild Infection of The Wildly Shaken Public Mind

An attempt to describe the human self informs the recent work of Beatrice Wanjiku. Through drawing and painting she continues to explore our internal identities and territories. For her, the internal self is the centre of our intuitions, emotions and beliefs; the place where the inner person is first found, then prised out and delineated. The vehicle that carries her to her discoveries is the human figure — primarily the head and the torso — and by demarcating her findings the artist has succeeded in revealing some of the intricacies that define the bond between self and the physical body. 

From our many conversations, I believe Beatrice’s work draws from a deep well of personal realities and truths. As a result it radiates a warmth of possibly subliminal recognition that nonetheless can be disconcerting, because of its unembellished gaze. For the honesty that hallmarks her unflinching study suggests that her paintings and drawings far from being detached from the prevailing realities of a greater society are instead a facet of it. Her work therefore resonates beyond her own truthful insight to connect with the experiences of others; an experience that is intrinsic to most great creative expressions. This resonance is evident through the rawness and depths experienced when viewing her paintings. At times looking at Beatrice’s paintings and drawings becomes disquieting as they force one to look inwards

Untitled IV (2020)🔴

In a previous text I have touched on how her skillful use of paint and brush becomes a celebration of both craft and medium and here ‘A wild infection of the wildly shaken public’ offers a resolution both of her formal skills and her creative interpretation of her findings. This exhibition is of paintings and drawings that Beatrice has created over the last two years. The timeline is significant. In late 2019 the emergence of the Covid-19 virus and the resultant pandemic has reshaped and continues to alter most of social structures. Public health protocols of social distancing, masking, curfews, quarantines and lockdowns have been some of the measures introduced to combat this catastrophe to produce a new reality that is affecting not only our cultural development but also the ways in which we express and maintain our personal selfhood.

In ‘A a wild infection of the wildly shaken public mind’ the artist’s frame of reference is that isolation can become a setting that enables us to face up to circumstances beyond our control. In some of the work the forms appear volatile, lacking definition. They are dark and allude to an atmosphere seemingly striving to envelope and obscure our humanity and confound the existence of our inner selves.The subjects struggle to emerge or remerge into clarity. Yet while through these works, Beatrice grants the uncertainty embedded in the present, she also evokes our inherent potency and capacity for regeneration and new beginnings. 

© Kamwathi 2021

Exhibition

The paintings explore our internal identities and territories, the self being the centre of our intuitions, emotion and beliefs; the place where the inner person is first found, then prised out and delineated.

Studio News

I hope everyone has been keeping well during these times. I admit I have been a bit neglectful with keeping up with the updates and the happenings in my studio. Hopefully something I can to remedy as I get back into the rhythm of things. I embraced the lockdown (which is nothing new seeing as an Artist most of our time in the studio is spent in isolation) I approach my studio work and dare I say life differently, Intentional, and more involved in everything and a bit experimental and open to new ideas and ways of working. 

One such project was, “The Tusk Lion Trail” A sculpture Trail curated by Chris Westbrook, that aims to highlight the ongoing threats to the survival of Lion population in Africa. The trail taking place simultaneously in London, Bristol, Edinburg, Sidney, New York City, Nairobi and Auckland. This project will be launched on world lion day which is on the 10th of August until 28th September. More information at https://www.tuskliontrail.com

A life-size sculpture of Panthera Leo

Work in progress

Samarra 

Scheduled for this month and more specifically 28th of August is my Solo Exhibition at OneOff gallery. And as is the norm introspective and interrogating encounters within our individual states. Can’t wait for you all to see the work.

Also scheduled but date to be announced is a group show at the Nairobi National Museum so stay tuned..

Losing My Religion

 Losing My Religion III (2020)

Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas 

160cm x 133cm

Catch A Fire

 

Restless in Rest V (2020)🔴

Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas 

160cm x133cm

Opening Thursday, January 28th (by appointment only) Montague Contemporary

“Catch a Fire” adopts the lens of individual experience to understand the intersectionality of the agent of change within society. Oscillating from self-examination of our social identity to challenging prescribed and untenable norms, each work is a rallying cry to re-examine our collective experience.

Ultimately, the exhibited work attempts to cement the ephemeral, to both identify and make concrete that palpable and transitory feeling of developing individuality amidst the context of shared struggle, when passionate optimism and collective sense of purpose overcomes collective dread. Each artist interrogates these interstices, with their own proposition for a way forward, whether tackling climate change, racial justice, economic inequity, or internal strife.

Happy 2021

 The Quintessence of Loneliness II (2020)

Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas 

As I look back on 2020, the greatest lesson I learned is gratitude. The world is an eternal return, we are but passengers in it. Grateful to see a new sunrise as it peeks through the curtains of a new dawn.

Happy New Year!