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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.