The Sea is Too Cold and Not Blue
3 x 6 meter, mixed materials, 2022

Water Memories and Blooms
3 x 4 meter, mixed materials, 2022

The work of Agnes Waruguru is a meditation on her native region and that of her ancestors. Despite living in Nairobi for years, the Nyeri region in the rural centre of Kenya is what comes to mind when hearing the word ‘home’. This is a well-known phenomenon in Kenya, a country that contrary to all expectations, is experiencing a growth in migration from the city to the countryside. As part of the Countryside research of Samir Bantal and Rem Koolhaas, researchers dr. Linda Nkatha Gichuyia en Etta Madete of the University of Nairobi studied the development of the countryside in Kenya, and discovered that Kenyans, even after having lived in the city for years, tend to identify more closely with the villages where their parents and grandparents lived, where they often still own a house or plot of land, a place they frequently refuge to in order to relax.

For Waruguru, this connection with the rural landscape manifests itself in a physical experience of the temperature, the smell, the colours and the vegetation, which she incorporates into her work.

For example, she often extracts the pigments for her paint from plants, flowers or soil, and paints on loose pieces of textile and lacework that remind her of her family history. With her work, she renders the connection between the physical place and the emotional association tangible. It is a quest for understanding how her home has manifested itself in her body, even while being somewhere else.