Fictions

Currently showing work at Circle Art Gallery, this exhibition curated by Don Handa, invites the viewer to consider possible relationships between one work and the next and, by extension, between each artist’s practice and the next. The title of the exhibition "Fictions" speaks to the possible connections that can emerge in the distance between artworks; and how that space can offer room for the viewer to begin thinking about thematic connections and overlaps. Fictions contends that one artwork/artist can expand the viewers thinking about another.

Recalled to Life (2020)

How, for example, do the intricate drawings of Gor Soudan, which intermingle the natural and man-made in our environment relate to the large abstract, iterative, landscape-inspired works of Tahir Karmali, or the material experiments of Maliza Kiasuwa? Where does the interiority that marks the works of Beatrice Wanjiku and Tiemar Tegene meet the narrative, observational quality of Salah Elmur and Geoffrey Mukasa’s portraits? Can the unfixed compositions of Jonathan Fraser somehow lead one to the dreamlike visions of Wanyu Brush? How do inanimate objects take on new lives in the paintings of Sujay Shah and Nahom Teklehaimanot?

The Primal and Unutterable II (2021)

Such questions – perhaps they are suggestions – lie at the heart of the exhibition. The show treats visual, thematic, and material parallels and starting points for richer, more involved interpretations of the selected works. The exhibition insists that we think of artworks as existing within a broader context of making and thinking, and not solely as discrete objects emerging from the studio.