August is a bit quieter iN Nairobi but there’s still quite a bit to keep you busy in the art world, especially events this coming weekend. Mid-August things start picking up, make sure to scroll down to see the shows that will be opening from then!
EVENTS
Her Voice, Her Power | HOF Gallery Kibera | Opening Saturday 9 August, 10am. Further performances and workshops on Sunday 10 August
π―ππ π½ππππ, π―ππ π·ππππ is a touring exhibition organized by the Amani Peoples Theater and Wanjiku Creative Spaces, comprising a body of visual work and conversations on Gender Based Violence focusing on healing. The exchibition will be hanging from 7 August, however 2 days group showcase of 10 creative visual artist will officially be opened on the 9th & 10th of August, accompanied with performance, theatrical storytelling elements a workshop and a panel conversation on the last day of the showcase.
πππ πππ₯π₯ππ«π² ππ’πππ«π Gallery open daily from 10am to 7pm. For more information kindly reach out to us via 0741443678.
The Beginnings Show | Group Exhibition | Old Rooftop Viewing Gallery, Village Market | Opening Friday 8 August | Until 25 August
An open rehearsal for a continuous, and collaborative practice. A first attempt to think of art not as an individual product, but as a space of encounter β a shared walk, a process of trying, thinking, and making together. Featuring works by:
Amani | Herra | Hozaifa | wraag | Sannad | Waleed | Yathrip
Dine By Design | She’Rustica Art Lab | Mega Farm, Kikuyu | Saturday 9 August | From 4pm
A sensory reverie of art, wine, and communion. What if a meal could echo the act of creation? What if sculpture wasnβt just seen but tasted, felt, sipped between silences? This isnβt a dinner. Itβs a slow unfolding.
A working studio becomes your portalΒ torch-lit tools, whispered stories, molten process.
You arrive as a guest. You become part of the piece. Five poetic courses. Paired wines that speak in notes of smoke, bloom, and memory. Cocktails crafted like spells. A table set like an altar. And around it, strangers turning into kin one pour, one plate, one question at a time. Then, firelight.The artists speak- A curated collective of collaborating artists. And maybe you remember something about yourself youβd nearly forgotten.
Caged Bird | The Wabiro Kollective | Munyu Space | Opening Sunday 10 August, 4pm | Until 16 August: Open Tue- Sat 12-6pm
A Muthoni Ni Mimi creation brought to life in collaboration with Achungechiro and Munyu.When you try to own freedom, it withers. Wings too weak to open, heart too broken to sing.
Open Studio Day |Β Private Location in Kilimani| Sunday 10 August | 12 – 9pm
Featuring the artists Hani Khalil, Yasir Algrai, and Bakri Moaz. Come experience the work up close, meet the artists, enjoy some tea and snacks, and spend time in the space at your own pace. For the exact location, please send us a DM or a WhatsApp/text to +254 (0) 742182226
Her Voice, Her Power | KNLS | Saturday 22 and Sunday 24 August
You’ll have another chance to see the same exhibition and events which were showcased at HOF Gallery, at this later date at KNLS.
ONGOING EXHIBITIONS
Bearing Witness: Echoes of Survival | Lango Kabhula | Until 14 August
This iteration re-centres the profound exploration of memory, sacrifice, and human endurance by this artist from DRC, while shifting the curatorial lens toward the act of collective remembrance and the potency of visual testimony in shaping new futures.
JANAM: People of the Lake | Marius Frank Ajuma | Creativity Gallery, Nairobi National MuseumΒ | Until 18 August
Bold. Colourful. Deeply rooted. – Explore the daily life of the Luo people around Lake Victoria through Ajumaβs striking brushwork.
Zelensky on my Mind, 2025, oil on canvas, 160 x 200cm
Sibylla Martin | Paintings for an Anxious Age | Circle Gallery | Until 22 August
“What moves and interests me is colour, I crave the smell and feel of oil paint and I love what it can do. The tension between colours moves me deeply and what you can make them do is the challenge.Β My Ukrainian grandfatherβs interest in geometric abstract art coloured my visual experience and embedded in me an enduring and instinctive inclination towards the abstract. Studying at the Slade School in London and travels to Italy gave me a disciplined grounding. I developed a rigorous painting technique with the use of traditional materials and proportion learnt from the early Renaissance painters. These twoΒ influences share a formality that is evident in my own work.”
Though a lover of nature, Sibylla has never been drawn to depicting the romantic landscape preferring instead to allow the colours an shapes around her to insert themselves into her abstract paintings.
Crossed Perspectives | Joseph Bertiers & Newton Eshivachi | Alliance Française | Until 31 August
This exhibition is an artistic dialogue between two generations of Kenyan artists: Joseph Bertiers, internationally recognizedΒ for his witty artworks, and Newton Eshivachi, a sharp-eyed emerging artist.
The two artists explore the complexities, aspirations, and contradictions of Kenyan society. Bertiers, known for his satirical and narrative style, offers a biting yet humorous critique of political and social absurdities. In contrast, Eshivachi presents a more introspective vision, shaped by identity quests and the cultural dynamics of a younger generation.
Between collective memory and contemporary realities, satire and visual poetry, this exhibition invites viewers to reflectβcritically, ironically, and with engagementβon Kenya’s past and present.
Self Talk | Ronnie Ogwang | Banana Hill Art Gallery | Until 31 August
“Self Talk,” a powerful solo exhibition by Ugandan artist Ronnie Ogwang. Rooted in personal reflection and unflinching honesty, this body of work draws viewers into a deeply introspective journey that explores the intersections of identity, loss, truth, and resistance.
Fragments of Becoming | Scopt | Holmes a Court Gallery, Afrika House, Hardy | Until 2 September
Harrison Karanja Kiuru (born 1985), professionally known as Scopt, is a multi-styled contemporary artist from Kikuyu, Kenya. Originally emerging from Nairobiβs graffiti movement, Karanjaβs work fuses dynamic mark-making with bold acrylics, spray paint, charcoal, and pastels. The current exhibition is a multi-sensory exploration of personal and cultural transformation, investigating the thin lines between strength and fragility, solitude and solidarity. The exhibition unfolds through distinct thematic zones, from rupture and reflection to re-formation. Using mixed media works through distorted figures and layered text, he challenges perception and evokes introspection.
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
Brikicho | Group Exhibition | Nairobi Art Gallery | Monday 11 August to 27 September
The Nairobi Gallery has called on women artists based in Nairobi to submit their work for an exciting showcase of the art that women are currently producing in Nairobi.
Skin as a Noun, as a Verb | Tevin Noel | Sena Art X Under The Swahili Tree, Karen | Opening reception on Friday 15 August, 3 – 6pm | Until 30 September
Tevin Noel is a self-taught visual artist whose practice explores transformation, identity, and the emotional terrain of becoming. Rooted in the symbolic language of trees and texture, his works evoke a poetic tension between solitude and self-renewal. Noel says, βWe do not simply grow; we unravel, rebuild, and reimagine ourselves in pieces.β Through three phases; Deep Introspection, Attempts at Actual Change, and Taking Form, this exhibition invites viewers into a meditative space of self-examination. Here, βskinβ becomes a metaphor for memory, rupture, and quiet emergence.
Forms of Fray | Anita Kavochy, Jonathan SΓΆlanke, Gathaara Fraser, Liz Kobusinge & Darlyne Komukama | The African Arts Trust | Opening Friday 15 August, 6pm-8pm. | Until 18 October
Forms of Fray | Anita Kavochy, Jonathan SΓΆlanke, Gathaara Fraser, Liz Kobusinge & Darlyne Komukama | The African Arts Trust | 
“Forms of Fray” brings together four artists whose practices explore the intimate interplay between memory and materiality, where the act of remembering is embedded in the textures, forms, and gestures of the work. Committed to paper not only as a surface, but as a carrier of meaning, and trace, their work is shaped by an attention to the processes of material, to what is gathered, altered, and left incomplete β imbuing what arrives with a material poetics: of fibres that hold, edges that unravel, forms that resist closure.
Liz Kobusinge crafts paper by hand, embedding the labour of making into each sheet, and together with sound artist Darlyne Komukama they print onto this paper, working the seams of collaboration in a way both tactile and conceptual. Kavochy gathers: discarded newspapers, fragments of public memory, overlaying them with painted scenes that disturb while reassembling what remains. Jonathan Fraserβs delicate drawings, rendered in watercolour, sit lightly on the surface, as if to mark without claiming.
The exhibition proposes fray not as failure but as method and measure. To suggest that no material, no memory, no body arrives whole, or remains so for long.
Ministry of Discovery | Mika Obanda | Opening Saturday 16 August, 3 – 7pm | Until 28 September
A solo showcase of new works by Mika Obanda