New Visions of selfhood

A lexicon of identity, memory, and belonging

ART | GORRETH NAGGANJA | At Circle Art Gallery, Nairobi, a group exhibition of six contemporary eastern Africa artists is featuring works largely informed by the intimate space of selfhood: identity, memory, and belonging.

The New Visions exhibition running Jan 22-Feb 27 features Pamela Enyonu and Ethel Aanyu (Ugandan), Fetlework Tadesse and Birhane Worede (Ethiopian) , Liberatha Alibalio (Tanzanian), and Sandra Wauye (Kenyan).

Pamela Enyonu, whose practice leans heavily on Pan-African literary works and mythology to carve out belonging in the multi-cultural milieu of her Ugandan heritage, is renowned for breaking convention in painting, presenting a confrontation of household paper on canvas. Fetlework Tadesse wields reflective compositional and thematic elements to point to the internal conflict spurred by provocative contemporary controversies like beauty standards, while Sandra Wauye leans heavily into Expressionism with colorful, somber figurations whose affect is elevated by the incorporation of animal companions in her processing of the intimate realms of grief and trauma.

Liberatha Alibalio, a multidisciplinary artist has a selection from her textile quilts chosen for their place in nurturing, holding memory and history. She exhibits her inquisitive approach to material by her unorthodox use of rust to dye her textiles.

Ethel Aanyu takes a unique approach to digital art foregrounded by photography and the emotional nuances of existence and connection, while Birhane Wrede is inspired by the goings on of life around his studio in Merkato, Addis Ababa and uses oil paints to portray self-examination in domestic settings in compositions that are suggestive of mood.

The work Ideke Abwangu,2024 is the introduction to New Visions. In it a sole feminine figure floats, as though in outer space. Inspired by the artist, Pamela Enyonu’s great grandmother, Ideke, named for an Atesot goddess, the series is an output of the artist’s self-created goddesses inspired both by indigenous mythology as well as her personal motivating relationships. She works in the context of Ugandan contemporary culture and histories and attempts to resolve the question of her identity both as an amalgamation of multiculturalism as well as one existing post the culture genocide of colonial occupation. She asks questions such as ‘What happens when a people forget themselves?’ and attempts to answer them through the literary works of Pan -African writers like Okot p’Bitek and their contemporaries. Her works invoke feminism ideals not inadvertently but rather out of the facts of the artist’s existence. Her practice continues to be her unflagging pursuit for ‘home’, a harmony in the multicity of Uganda.

In the series, Ethel Aanyu captures the ambiguity of emotion in digital distortions of her photography. Her works recall the idea of a thermogram suggesting that the artwork is a peek beyond the visible spectrum to the very radiation of being-a capture of the intensity and heat of inner landscapes. In Ekiya 2(The charm), 2024, the observer is prompted to see beyond the lady, who would otherwise simply wave lovingly in frame, to the complexity of her inner makeup and consequently to one’s own inescapable subconscious.

Birhane Worede’s meditative figures are immortalised in universally familiar postures of self-dialogue. Their curious lack of facial features is accurate in terms of the absence of physiognomy in the navigation of one’s own inner landscapes, it also grants the works a relatability for the observer. The artist’s subtle approach to form in outlines and color sets a scene that is loosely grounded and turns the works into a metaphor for mental processes.

Liberatha Alibalio’s quilt selection titled RE/MIX I- VII is supported by found objects from the home of the artist’s grandmother in Kagera Tanzania. In it, familial memorabilia in the form of digital photographs and other ephemera are stitched together to form quilts. Her collection boasts a wealth of material; backcloth, rafia, cotton, rust, natural dyes and technique; print, stitch, collage and painting. The artist’s ability to synthesise rust- normally an agent of destruction- into a thing of beauty and utility mirrors the sentimentality of lived in spaces; old homes, old selves. Red thread adorns the series as a common stitched motif materialising the threads of attachment to belongings, even the rusty ones and their integral place in memory and the deposition of self.

In The Light that Drew Me Here, 2024 Sandra Wauye captures the mood of her protagonist and the dogs inspired by her real-life canine companions. The artist credits community and caregiving for uplifting the self. In these works, she refers back to a time in her life when her anxiety was alleviated by her companionship with the animals that she named and fed in her village home.

‘I think about nurturing other living things… and now living in an apartment, I miss it.’ She aims to recreate these memories in her art.

Her process involves a confrontation with colour, wielded boldly and confidently in a need to mediate with a world that is fast becoming black and white.

On each canvas, Liberatha Alibalio sets a scene of internal strife through a bifurcation of self. In Eve and Me, 2024, the artist and seemingly her shadow are bound, blinded (like the Egyptian Mummy) and together consumed by flames while reaching for the literal forbidden fruit. Maybe it is the artist contending with the draw to societally chastised desires or it is the suppression of one’s true nature in performance of assigned feminine roles. Either way the observer is drawn into reflection.

Throughout, the selection is rife with meaning in choice of color, content, style. In Embrace,2024, Fetlework Tadesse captures her naked body seemingly leisurely laid except for the claw of her hand that might signify an ongoing anguish. An anguish that is reflected elsewhere like in the only food item present in this scene of otherwise domestic comfort; a red pepper that is codified in its perfect balance with an empty scale. Her strife is watched, all the while, by a faceless clocked other self. The multiplicity of interpretations is acknowledged by numerous planes in every frame portrayed as translucent shapes.

Together the works achieve an elegant cohesion that elevates New Visions to a lexicon of selfhood; that what seem like individual experiences are one shared experience, a language we all understand.

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Circle Art gallery was founded by artist Danda Jaroljmek with Arvind Vohora, and Fiona Fox in 2013 and has a commitment to nurture emerging artists across the region through exhibition and promotion of their work.