Dates: January 27 – February 17, 2021
Venue: Circle Art Gallery
About
The Source of our Seas will be Shabu’s first solo show since 2017 and his second with Circle. This exhibition combines recent paintings alongside a series of poems by the artist.
Shabu Mwangi has been a practising artist since 2003. This work traces an ongoing personal journey of striving to understand the balance between the two things that drive us, love and pain and how we react in different ways depending on which is dominant. Shabu Mwangi’s work has previously dealt with questions of collective suffering, and the effects that inequality, marginalization, and other forms of structural violence have on communities. In this new body of work, he has tuned his gaze inward, focusing on an examination of the self. He asks himself questions about how he sees the people around him, and his interactions with them.
“We are all connected to one another, and none of us is truly free from our collective struggles. I have a family, I have a clan, I have a tribe…”
In this work, Shabu considers these different stages or levels of connection. Because we are all interconnected, and because the work is drawn from the reality and rhythm of the world, he believes that people will, each in their own way, relate to the work.
Shabu lives and works in Mukuru slum where he established the Wajukuu Art Project in 2013 with a deep conviction that his work could highlight the lives of the disadvantaged minorities in his community. His last exhibition was The Stateless at Circle in 2017 and his work has been shown in the UK, France and Germany.
