Kaloki Nyamai Bio
Born 1985, Kituii, Kenya
Lives and works in Nairobi
A self-taught artist, Nyamai began his career by drawing in charcoal and documenting and complicating the perception of the life in the slum settlement where he grew up. Grounded in hidden narratives, uneasy stories of identity, environment and memory, offering fragments to be pieced together slowly. The lengthy, searching process employed in the making of the works is mirrored in the experience of viewing them. Nyamai explores the parallels between the past and the present through richly-layered, multimedia works. Drawing heavily on the stories of the Kamba people, the works explore how history and identity are intertwined and how this has informed the identities of people living in present day, post-colonial Kenya.
“Nyamai’s canvas feels like some sort of rapture, a distinguished composite of loss and reinvention – a symbolic erasure and preservation of memory. What the fire erases, his canvases preserve as debris of memory. Like jazz music, his canvases are an improvised composition – spontaneous, extemporization, ad-libbing. Each brush, strokes over continuously repeating cycles of stitching that alters the visual. He depends on the contours of the burnt and ripped canvas and the possibilities of the stitch’s harmony. ”Recent exhibition projects include, 2019 ‘Mwaki Nginya Evinda Enge (The Fire Next Time)’, Circle Art Gallery, Nairobi, Kenya, 2018 ‘I Am Not My Father’, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa, 2018 Kampala Art Biennale, Kampala, Uganda.
Lives and works in Nairobi
A self-taught artist, Nyamai began his career by drawing in charcoal and documenting and complicating the perception of the life in the slum settlement where he grew up. Grounded in hidden narratives, uneasy stories of identity, environment and memory, offering fragments to be pieced together slowly. The lengthy, searching process employed in the making of the works is mirrored in the experience of viewing them. Nyamai explores the parallels between the past and the present through richly-layered, multimedia works. Drawing heavily on the stories of the Kamba people, the works explore how history and identity are intertwined and how this has informed the identities of people living in present day, post-colonial Kenya.
“Nyamai’s canvas feels like some sort of rapture, a distinguished composite of loss and reinvention – a symbolic erasure and preservation of memory. What the fire erases, his canvases preserve as debris of memory. Like jazz music, his canvases are an improvised composition – spontaneous, extemporization, ad-libbing. Each brush, strokes over continuously repeating cycles of stitching that alters the visual. He depends on the contours of the burnt and ripped canvas and the possibilities of the stitch’s harmony. ”Recent exhibition projects include, 2019 ‘Mwaki Nginya Evinda Enge (The Fire Next Time)’, Circle Art Gallery, Nairobi, Kenya, 2018 ‘I Am Not My Father’, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa, 2018 Kampala Art Biennale, Kampala, Uganda.