Opening: April 24, 2024
Venue: Circle Art Gallery
Time: 6-8 PM
Exhibition Dates: Until May 5, 2024.
About
Shabu Mwangi‘s practice focuses on the effects of contemporary and historical violence, and other forms of marginalization on individual and collective psyches. Mwangi’s mixed media compositions are an abstracted emotional reflection of societal and cultural fissures.
His current body of work continues to build on explorations of human interiority when faced with structural violence that affect the individual, community and society at large.
Mwangi has lived and worked in Mukuru, an informal settlement in Nairobi where he co-founded the Wajukuu Art Project in 2003. In 2023, he was a finalist for the Access Art X Prize in the Africa/Diaspora category. In 2022 Mwangi and fellow members of the Wajukuu Art Project participated in Documenta 15 in Kassel, where they went on to win the Arnold Bode prize. He also participated in the 13 Biennial do Mercosul in Brazil, 2022. Recent solo and group exhibitions include: Self Addressed, curated by Kehinde Wiley for Deitch Gallery, Los Angeles, 2023; Systems to Emptiness, a prelude to Documenta 15, 2022; A Never Ending Longing, Circle Art Gallery, Cromwell Place, London, 2022; The Sources of Our Seas, Circle Art Gallery, 2021; East African Encounters, Cromwell Place, London, 2021.
Other shows include: The Man with Two Shadows, Circle Art Gallery online, 2020; Yawning for Power, Tilleard Projects, 2019; The Stateless, Circle Art Gallery, 2018; Freedom, Flight, Refuge, Circle Art Gallery, 2017; Art Transposition, Nairobi-Kampala-Hamburg, LKB Gallery, Hamburg; Pop-Up Africa, GAFRA, London, 2017; Out of the Slum, Essen, 2012.
Mwangi has participated in residency programs in Kenya, Germany and Italy.
