Name: Wambui Kamiru
Nationality KEN
Place of Birth: Kenia
Year of Birth: 1982
Areas of work: installation
Website: https://wambuikamiru.wordpress.com/

Born in 1982, in Kenya, Wambui Kamiru has been developing artwork around the theme of colonialism, identity and independence in Africa. She is the Founder of The Art Space – a contemporary gallery with alternative show spaces.

Through her own work in contemporary art – mainly simulated experiences – Wambui tackles history, politics and social issues. Originally a painter, her main medium is acrylic on canvas with newspaper print, with recent pieces incorporating copper wire. Wambui now creates installations with various mediums.

Wambui Kamiru holds an MSc in African Studies with a focus on Kenyan History from the University of Oxford. Her dissertation focused on the attempt to create collective memory around Kenya’s Mau Mau War and the family of Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi.

Tree is an installation about the distance between life and loss. Using the symbol of a tree, the installation plays on an experience of life and death and the human role in bringing about both extremes. The piece’s fragility can be witnessed as the exhibition progresses. The installation projects a future where man can only remember something that once existed called “tree.” It is part of a collaborative exhibition that brings the climate change conversation closer home to Kenya.

I’m moving out. Tomorrow. (#IMOTomorrow) is set in a living room, where we see through a woman’s eyes, the very moment that the woman is deciding whether to walk out of her marriage or not. The room holds all the emotions and memories that the woman is processing on this night before she “moves out.” It presents her current state against the backdrop of her past life. The room is framed in transition, between the woman making her decision and the actual action of “moving out.” In its finality there is tenderness and the expression of strength, past happiness, rejection, sadness, pain, uncertainty, anger and distant hope. The room travels the spectrum from overwhelming joy to excruciating sadness, inviting the audience into this pivotal, sacred moment.

Your Name Betrays You (#YourNameBetraysYou) explores the origin of ethnicity using current literature on the invention of culture and tradition. Key texts point at tradition as a purposely-created classification of Africans by missionaries and colonial administrations, much in the same way that a guidebook would be written for birds. The exhibition will look critically at the words/stereotypes we hold of the "other” – root, development and how we have made it a part of our lives. It will also look at the effect on our future society and will create dialogue around our present perceptions of ethnicism.

Wambui is currently working with fellow artist Xavier Verhoest on a national public art project/installation, Who I Am, Who We Are, about the Kenyan identity and ideas of nationalism, present and future.

Who I Am, Who We Are (#WhoWeAreKE) is a project about the idea of nationhood and how this is embodied through the Kenyan sense of identity and everyday interactions. It is a concept animated by the notion that today’s world reflects a reality both multiple and unique. Nowhere is this idea truer than here, in Kenya, at 50. The project has travelled through Nairobi, to Kisumu and Isiolo.

In 2013, Wambui held an experiential installation on Panafricanism, Harambee63, at Kuona Trust, Nairobi, where her studio is based. It was also shown at the University of Wits in South Africa in 2014.
Harambee63 (#Harambee63) places the period of independence, specifically 1960 – 1963, as a key marker of the global movement against the oppression of Black and Coloured people. The installation demonstrates that the struggle for freedom was universal and cyclical. It raises questions about whom we consider revolutionaries touching on Africa’s vast history (1884 – 1963) from Gandhi and Shaka to modern day “heroes”, political or non-political.

Exhibitions

Collaborative Projects:
2013 – 2016 Who I Am, Who We Are: A Public Art Project about the Kenian Identity, Nairobi, Kisumu, Isiolo, Lamu and Nyeri – Kenia (with Xavier Verhoest) www.whoweare.co.ke

Group exhibitions:
2016 When Things Fall Apart, Harambee63, Trapholt Museum of Modern Art, South Jutland - Dänemark
2015 ForeCast, “Tree,” Goethe Institute, Nairobi - Kenia
2015 Concerning the Internal, I Move Out. Tomorrow., Circle Art Gallery, Nairobi – Kenia
2015 Suitcase Commodity Cash on Delivery (COD), Sarakasi Trust, British Institute of East Africa, GoDown Arts Centre, Nairobi – Kenia
2015 Your Name Betrays You, United States Embassy Residence, Nairobi, Kenia
2015 Harambee63, National Museum of Kenia, Nairobi – Kenia
2015 Between A Rock And A…, CitiBank, Nairobi – Kenia
2014 Net, Kuona Trust Gallery, Nairobi – Kenia
2014 Coffee Conversations, Manjano, Village Market Gallery, Nairobi – Kenia
2011 Double Vision, Kifaru House and Karen Country Lodge, Nairobi – Kenia

Solo exhibitions:
2015  Your Name Betrays You, Kuona Trust Gallery, Nairobi – Kenia
2014  Harambee63, Wits University, Johannesburg – Südafrika
2013  Harambee63, Kuona Trust Gallery, Nairobi – Kenia