Peterson Kamwathi

Born 1980 in Nairobi, Peterson Kamwathi belongs to a generation of young East African artists that break with the traditional art canon.

Peterson’s highly codified, symbolic, conceptual works, whose content and concepts go far beyond local relevance, distance themselves from the usual patterns of reception of figurative art from Kenya. Rendered in thick layers of charcoal, pastel, water color and collage, Peterson’s figures are anonymous, static, almost abstract, a physical presence powerfully pushed to the forefront of the picture plane and the viewer’s attention by dense backgrounds devoid of vanishing points.

His practice, fostering the idea of art as a process-based and time-based project, often creates encapsulated visual archives by exploring contemporary themes in series and in layers, each group of works exploring social, political, personal and institutional structures symbolized through the depiction of the human figure. Each work is part of a series, thematically intertwined whilst individually delving deeper into the concept that informs the group.

In his works, the artist is touches upon the forced migration, as a large social and political issue, which he describes as follows:

“Human movement has since time immemorial constituted a fundamental process of the structure and fiber of all societies. Different cultures coming into contact has contributed to some of the advances that continue to propel humanity towards newer perspectives. It has not necessarily been an easy thing and many adjustments have had to be made. Human migration is a complex phenomenon but its basic unit remains man's desire to know and experience the unknown, the more or the better.

We remain at our innermost a restless species. The past few years have been confronted by the spectacle and the tragedy of human migration towards the European North and West. I examine the contortions adopted by those who are part of forced migration. Forced mass movements have featured consistently in the news media for quite a number of years now. One of the most visible spectacles of these mass movements is the image of people clustered together in a state of waiting. In this body of work, I started by trying to define what compels people to undertake perilous journeys into the unknown: constellation being the air of collective and individual aspirations, sediments symbolizing the many layers that constitute the difficult realities inherent to these transitions. Constellations can be hope, dreams for a better future and personal ambitions. Sediments are an individual's past, the history of one's society and their place in it, limitations in access to basic human needs and wants. Dreams and aspirations are ever changing.”

Peterson’s group of works Sitting Allowance, which propelled him to national and international attention in 2007, was arguably the strongest and most visible artistic engagement with the deep crisis that Kenyan society experienced during the violence that exploded in the country after the general election of 2007-08, which left over 1000 people dead and to this day over 300,000 internally displaced people. It is an enigmatic, challenging and powerful comment on the political and social constitution not only of Kenya but the rest of the continent, an indictment on the institutions most closely associated with common electoral failures and corrupt political processes.

Kamwathi’s work has been exhibited in numerous venues around the world including Kenya, the UK, the USA, Netherlands, Austria, El Salvador, Finland.

He has participated in several art residencies, including the Fontys Academie Kenya-Holland Exchange in 2003, Artists in Residence at the University of Kentucky, USA in 2005, printmaking residencies at the London Print Studio and Bath Spa University College in 2006, the Thupelo International Artist workshop in South Africa 2006, and Art Omi 2009 International Artists Residency, New York.

He was part of the Nairobi Art Trusts’ Amnesia Project and the Jet-Lag experiment project in 2008 and 2009 and exhibited at the 2010 and 2014 Dakar Biennale, Senegal. He continues to participate in several residencies in Europe and the US.