Find all the art iN Nairobi this month….Events, openings and ongoing exhibitions, it’s all here in your monthly art guide.
EVENTS & OPENINGS
Art Dialogue | National Museums of Kenya X Embassy of Colombia | Ford Hall, National Museum | Tuesday 14 July | 10am – 12pm
An engaging Art Dialogue between Colombian and Kenyan Artists, a collaborative event by the Embassy of Colombia and the National Museums of Kenya. Featuring special guests Maestro José Eibar Castillo and Maestro Alberto Caicedo, this conversation creates a space for reflection on shared cultural heritage, artistic practices and the connections that shape our creative worlds.
Birhane Worede | Circle Art Gallery | Opening 15 July | Until 12 September
“Throughout my work, I expressed interest in self-discovery and the everyday occurrences of the surrounding world. Growing up, living and working as a studio artist in the biggest market place of Africa “Merkato” Addis Ababa influences my work. Human life and emotions are main inspirations… I want my work to create consciousness … self-awareness, curiosity for others’ self- examination.”
Anita Kavochy | Circle Art Gallery | Opening 15 July | Until 12 September
Anita is a Kenyan artist born in Kibera who primarily draws, paints, and experiments on different mediums and materials. Her work seeks to recover the layers of emotions that constitute the self and the relation to the world, the work questions the notion of home and belonging.
Alpha Odhiambo | Kamene Centre, Santack Estate | Thursday 16 July | 6 -10pm
New work exploring ownership, land, and privacy through acrylic on vinyl mesh — fences and boundaries as language.
Future Makers by Jackfruit Foundation | Shah Houses Gallery, Ngara Road, Nairobi | Saturday 18 July | 12 – 7 pm | Awards Ceremony 3-4 pm
3,396 students. 73 schools. 20 counties. Cuated by Marine (Liminal Spaces) & Prithika (The Station). Vision’s for Kenya’s future through pencil, paint, fabric, and mixed media. A showcase of finalist artworks from our nationwide student art competition, alongside featured works by our panel of professional Kenyan artist judges: Shabu Mwangi, Freshia, Ngugi Waweru, Elizabeth Deng, Adam Masava & Emmaus Kimani.
100% of proceeds fund arts education in low income schools across Kenya.
Seven Artists Exhibition & Open Studio | Kobo Trust | Opening Saturday 18 July, 12 – 7pm | Until 8 August
Ann Wambui | Contemporary Image Centre | Saturday 18 July | 7pm
An evening with Ann Wambui, a street and documentary photographer based in Nairobi who moves through the city with her camera, following one instinct wherever she goes: let the city reveal itself, unposed and unasked. She will present a collection of black-and-white photographs from (Life, Unasked) bodies in motion, faces mid-thought, the city thinking out loud — followed by an open conversation about street photography, the ethics of photographing in public spaces, and the photographer’s role as a witness to the city she calls home.
Limited edition prints will also be available.
KES 500 · Limited seats
RSVP: Link in bio @cic.africa.
The Great Repair | Munyu Space | The Mall, Westlands | 31 July – 25 October
Munyu and ARCH+ present The Great Repair: umunyu — the first African edition of the internationally acclaimed exhibition exploring repair as a social, ecological, and cultural practice. Bringing together artists, architects, designers, researchers, and community practitioners from Kenya and across the world, the exhibition asks a timely question: What does it mean to repair a world in constant transition?
ONGOING EXHIBITIONS
Colour Our World | Betty Press | One Off Contemporary Art Gallery | Until 19 July
Betty Press’ exhibition brings together images spanning four decades of observation, travel, and visual storytelling. Drawn from her extensive work across Africa and beyond, the exhibition reflects a deeply human and poetic approach to documentary photography.
Through intimate portraits, landscapes, and everyday moments, Press captures the resilience, beauty, and quiet complexity of human experience. Her photographs move between memory and place, offering viewers a contemplative journey through cultures, communities, and changing times, while celebrating the enduring power of photography to connect people across generations.
Betty Press is an internationally exhibited photographer known for her long engagement with Africa, especially Kenya and East Africa, where she worked and photographed extensively from the late 1980s onward.
Here; Now | Musyoka Martin | One Off Contemporary Art Gallery | Until 19 July
Musyoka Martin’s botanical paintings explore the quiet relationship between nature, memory, and human emotion. Working primarily in acrylic, he creates layered compositions where organic forms, leaves, flowers, and imagined plant life become symbolic spaces for reflection and storytelling. His botanical works balance realism with abstraction, combining rich textures, luminous colour, and fluid movement to evoke growth, fragility, and transformation.
Rooted in Nairobi’s contemporary art scene and influenced by his experimental painting techniques, Musyoka’s practice often merges natural imagery with social and personal narratives. His paintings invite viewers to slow down and observe the delicate rhythms of the natural world while considering themes of renewal, coexistence, and resilience.
Indigo Hypoxia | Sannad Shreef | Goethe-Institut | Until 23 July
Indigo Hypoxia is conceived as an immersive solo exhibition—a space that brings together painting, textile installation, and live performance. It presents a series of presences: alienated blue figures existing within a purple atmosphere.
The exhibition explores an internal psychological state shaped by a sense of spatial and emotional void. This is not a literal room, but a mental enclosure in which the figures are suspended—caught between withdrawal and exposure, fragility and weight.
Ithui Othe O Rimwe (All of Us, All At Once ) | Harrison Karanja “Scopt” | Creativity Gallery, Nairobi National Museum | Until 31 July
At a moment shaped by accelerating technology, ecological uncertainty, and shifting realities, Harrison Karanja “Scopt” invites us into Ithuĩ Othe O Rĩmwe (All of Us, All at Once) a powerful reflection on how memory, identity, nature, systems, and imagined futures exist simultaneously within shared human experience.
Through 35 layered paintings drawn from Once Upon a Time and Of Monoliths and Plinths, Scopt builds a world where landscapes, human figures, architecture, and data infrastructures overlap, revealing not one story, but many unfolding at once. Guided by Scoptism, the works open space for multiple interpretations and remind us that we are always interconnected with each other, with our histories, and with the futures we are still shaping.
Resonance | Kenyatta University | Until 31 July
Come experience a world where nothing exists in isolation, where everything is connected, and all of us are here, all at once, exploring the profound ways in which “Changing realities in which we live.”Featuring captivating works, this month-long event showcases unique artistic expressions and innovative design.
Quilting Light | Elizabeth Ashamu Deng | Paper Cafe X The Good Grain | Until 1 August
In this body of work, Elizabeth pushes cyanotype beyond a single process. She uses toning to shift its characteristic blues into browns, draws on photographic, hand-drawn, and contact-print methods, and sometimes adds gold pen, gold leaf, watercolour, and stitching to create richly textured compositions.. Free and open to all
Viewing Hours; Tuesday to Saturday, 8 am to 4 pm.
House of Kuria | Group Exhibition | HoF Gallery, Kibera Arts District | Until 2 August
An exhibition based on a family of creatives, curated by Santana Sino
Things That Make Us | Yusuf Mirumbe & Benjamin Ogada | Nobody Owns Me Gallery, Kibera Arts District | Until 2 August
The Cost of Presence | Santana Sino | Annex Gallery, Kibera Arts District | Until 2 August
HUMANIMALS | Dar Al Naim – Sudan | THE SORROW OF EXILE | Rashid Diab – Sudan | Red Hill Art Gallery | Until 15 August
The Art of Connection: Part 2 – The Invisible City | Curated by Myrna Art Direction @ Hyatt Regency | June – August
In collaboration with Hyatt Hotels Westlands Nairobi, the exhibition ‘The Art of Connection’ unfolds across five floors as a living exhibition curated by Myrna (Art Direction). Bringing together contemporary artists and designers the exhibition explores art as a fluid space of encounter, movement, and exchange. New works will be introduced throughout the duration of the exhibition.
Artists and designers are invited to submit their work and join the exhibition. Portfolios (PDF) can be submitted via WhatsApp to +254 115 784 649
In This Valley of Dying Stars | Jess Atieno | The African Arts Trust | Until 16 August
In This Valley of Dying Stars reveals how we are haunted not only by the lingering weight of the past, but also by futures that were once imagined and never realized. At the heart of the exhibition lies Jess Atieno´s investigation of brutalist architecture in the context of post-independence Africa. Once envisioned as monuments to liberation, progress, and collective futurity, these structures now persist as weathered remnants — spectral forms suspended between utopian aspiration and historical rupture.
Exhibition curated by Niklas Obermann.
Tabula Rasa | Peterson Kamwathi | NCAI | Until 23 August
Peterson Kamwathi’s first major institutional solo exhibition and his first such exhibition in Nairobi. Spanning drawing, printmaking, sculpture, video, and a site-specific wall drawing, the exhibition centres drawing as a way of thinking, a way of looking that is never passive. Through layered images, shifting between clarity and obscurity, Kamwathi questions what is remembered, what is erased, and who decides. The everyday becomes monumental; the overlooked, charged with history. In this exhibition, Kamwathi offers something more valuable than resolution: a set of images precise enough to slow us down, and open enough to let us look again.
A featured work By @altayeb_morhal, from the opening collection at Nubian Art Gallery
Opening Collection | Nubian Art Gallery (Stellato Mall) | Ongoing
The newest gallery in town, championing Sudanese art/artists and raising funds to support communities in Sudan affected by crisis, uplift children, and empower artists back home. Walk-ins are welcome, and private viewings can be arranged by appointment.
Hours: Mon – Thurs & Saturday 12-8pm | Friday & Sunday 2 – 9pm
Wahenga Wa Sanaa | Nairobi National Museum | Until 2027
Wahenga wa Sanaa: Tracing two centuries of artistic legacy 1800 – 1980
Wahenga wa Sanaa brings the NMK collection into public view, tracing powerful themes of cultural identity, spirituality, history and politics, nature and environment, and the growth of formal art training and supporting institutions. The exhibition honours the Wahenga—the wise ancestors and cultural forebearers whose creativity laid the foundation for generations of artists. As we create art today, we walk in their footsteps and continue to build on their enduring legacy. The exhibition is funded by the Kenya Museum Society. Read more about the exhibition in our article.