September in Nairobi is buzzing with art as the city comes out the winter hibernation — from open-air showcases at Village Market to new exhibitions at NCAI & Circle Art Gallery, niche events at Munyu Space and a pop-up exhibition in Ngara… Heritage, fabrics, stories, futures — all unfolding across the city this month.
EVENTS
Looking Into the Mad Eye of History Without Blinking | Canon Griffin Rumanzi | NCAI | Opening Thursday 11 September | 5pm
A solo exhibition by Ugandan artist Canon Griffin Rumanzi, curated by Trevor Mukholi. The exhibition confronts the turbulent and fragmented narratives of Uganda’s past and their ongoing echoes in the present.
Through digital collage and archival intervention, Griffin layers colonial records, state symbols, family portraits, and everyday images to create a visual language of fracture, one that refuses easy containment or simplified stories. His work challenges us to look directly, without blinking, at the contradictions of history and the unresolved complexities that shape our collective memory.
Sacred Echoes | Allan Simba | 30 Kigware Ridge, Windsor View Gardens H6 | Saturday 13 & Sunday 14 September | 2 – 7pm
As I was researching the symbols and elements that I wanted in this offering, I soaked in the (not uniquely) African concept of humanity being the product of the conjugal embrace of two opposites, the sun and the moon, the sky and earth, or the ocean and the soil. This way of thinking also implies that we’re actually allowed to be here, and we’re a part of nature in all its forms, not unworthy evictees of a lost paradise. – Allan Simba
Entry is free but RSVP: +393487399454 / +393495054223
Layes of Us | Mahali Spaces | Kamene Art Centre | Saturday 13 September | 3 – 8pm
A night where creativity, community & curiosity collide. Tickets include: curated art exhibit, collaborative canvas (you get to take your piece home), clay modeling, cheese tasting, a welcome mocktail.
It Resonates | Group Exhibition | 50 GOLDBORNE X Heltz House, Ngara | Opening Reception Sunday 14 September | 2 – 7pm | Exhibition runs until 4 October, every Thursday to Sunday from 2 – 6pm
“It Resonates” marks the first exhibition in Nairobi by London-based gallery 50 GOLBORNE. First shown privately at the TED Countdown (Climate) Global Summit in Nairobi (June 2025), “It Resonates” now opens to the wider public in Nairobi. It showcases the work of nine contemporary artists across the African continent. Drawing on the concept of “resonance” by German philosopher Hartmut Rosa—the charged interplay where self and world affect one another—the exhibition reveals how themes of sustainability and climate subtly infuse the works. Although the continent is the world’s least polluting, it is among the most affected by climate change. “It Resonates” responds not with imagery of catastrophe, but with artistic explorations of connection and transformation. .
Exhibiting Artists:
🇲🇦Safaa Erruas (@safaaerruas)
🇺🇬Sanaa Gateja (@gatejasanaa_official)
🇰🇪Martin Jakaila (@mjakaila)
🇧🇯Emo de Medeiros (@emo.de.medeiros)
🇰🇪Chemu Ng’ok (@chemungok)
🇺🇬Joseph Ntensibe (@josephntensibe)
🇺🇬Collin Sekajugo (@collin_sekajugo)
🇲🇬Temandrota (@temandrota)
🇰🇪Joseph Kamaru (@_kamaru_
In collaboration with @prithika.mohan (@weare.thestation) and @christine__hogendoorn (@lmnl_spaces).
Photography Exhibtion | Teti Sulu & Trevor Maingi | Good Grain Bakery | Sunday 14 September | 12-5pm
In The Last Ones, @tetisulu & @mustbe_tj turn their gaze towards Mount Kenya’s shifting landscape, treating it not simply as a backdrop but as a subject in its own right. The photographs, shot on film and the result of a demanding climb, resist immediacy. They insist on slowness: the patient tones of silver grain, the pauses for exposure, the weight of waiting for the developed negative. Rather than tell a single story, this body of work places human presence in dialogue with geological time, inviting us to reflect on the weight of change, and the delicate balance between permanence and transformation. Opening night RSVP is closed. RSVP Link for Sunday Gallery Day in @papercafe.nbo bio. Exhibition on view until 13 November.
Hang Me Between Your Windows | Tahir Karmali | Circle Art Gallery | Opening Hang Me Between Your Window | Opening reception Wednesday 17 September | 6-8pm | Until 16 October
Working across an array of mediums, Kenyan-born, NYC-based Tahir Karmali’s work dances through the visceral, the emotional and the intimate. Karmali’s expansive material-oriented practice employs photography, installation, paper making, sculpture and sound concentrates. Using these media, he explores notions of migration, landscape and geology, labour and belonging.
Red Link: Cultual Soirée | Munyu Space | Friday 19 September
A cultural celebration of Ethiopian food, music and art at Munyu Space in conjunction with Tizzita Tefera’s solo exhibition Red Link. More information on ticketing will be available @shybunasprice. Exhibition information below:
Red Link: Closing Performance | Tizzita Tefera | Munyu Space | Saturday 20 September | 4pm
Red: as in the pulse of life. Link: as in the threads that bind. Red Link is my offering, an invitation into my ever shifting world, where curiosity leads, intuition hums, and the past, present, and becoming intertwine. A journey of inner transformation, held by self, nurtured by community, now finding form in the outer realm. Step in. Feel. Witness. – Tizzita Tefera.
This exhibition is open to viewing through 20 September, Tuesday – Sunday 12 – 6pm.
Generations & Memories | Hazina Trade Towers (formerly Nakumatt Lifestyle), CBD | 18 September until 9 October
Generations & Memories is a month-long exhibition and series of events featuring new work, performances, publications, discussions, participatory expression and more. Generations & Memories explores connections, not just with each other, but across generations and the historical boundaries of those that came before us. Together we explore this entanglement, asking: What do we want to pass on? What do we remember? What do we forget? What legacies do we carry and which to let go?
Creative Arena | Shah Houses, Ngara | Saturday 20 September | 1pm onwards
Creative Arena | Shah Houses, Ngara | Saturday 20 September | 1pm onwardsCreative Arena is a live art competition where 12 artists go head to head until only one artist is left standing! The audience will vote on who moves on to each round and the eventual winner. There will then be a silent auction for the pieces made on the day.
Art in the Open | 19th Edition | Village Market | 25 – 28 September | 10am – 6pm
A celebration of artistry, culture, and creative excellence returns. Experience an open-air gallery featuring captivating works by leading and emerging artists—each piece a story, many available to own. Free entry.
ONGOING EXHIBITIONS
Nyakati Artists Exhibition | Chez Mahmadi | Until 13 September
Each piece captures a moment and a reflection of becoming. A journey of self-discovery and navigating through life.
Faces | Group Exhibtion of artists from Kibera | Ardhi Gallery | Until 16 September
Each piece explores the theme of the “face” as a symbol of identity, connection, and lived experience. The result is a collection that is heartfelt, warm, and diverse—styles as unique as the individuals behind them, yet united by a shared spirit of creativity and storytelling.
Group Exhibition | Article 2050, Karen Village | Until 20 September
Over 50 pieces by both emerging and established artists. Experience the soul of the artists – discover, connect and own original art. Free entry. Open daily 10am – 5pm.
The Seed Within, 2025 – Priya Shah
Energy Never Lies | Prina Shah | One Off Gallery | Until 21 September
“Energy Never Lies” was inspired by a series of questions that emerged from my earlier body of work, the Divine Feminine. Questions that further investigate the true nature of the self through the lens of energy. Through these investigations, Shah invites the audience to explore their own frequency, energy, vibration, and the information received. To question, if you could harness this energy, what would your desired reality look like?
Osiris, 2016 – Talitha Puri Negri
My Secret Life of Red | Talitha Puri Negri | One Off Gallery | Until 21 September
Negri says she is intrigued by red, as it is a colour that affects the human psyche. Studies have shown that waitresses who wear red are more likely to receive bigger tips from men. Olympians who wear red in combat sports, statistically have an edge over their opponents. “Over the years I have subconsciously, and later consciously, been documenting my contact with red. From the houses of my childhood in the Tuscan hills to the walls in the slum of Korogocho. Red resonates with identity, with love, with passion and all the feelings that are connected to our homes and people who live in them. Red is the colour of the Kenyan soil, of the country I have chosen to live in and that has made me the person I am today.”
Hope: Recent Paintings | Beatrice Wanjiku | One Off Gallery | Until 21 September
An informal showing of Wanjiku’s recent works.
Brikicho | Group Exhibition | Nairobi Art Gallery | Until 27 September
Over 30 Kenyan women artists have answered African Art Agenda’s @artstudionotes call, revealing works that challenge erasure and reclaim public space for their stories.
Brikicho—Swahili for hide-and-seek—has become a collective act of finding, seeing, and amplifying. And now, you can view the works and engage at Nairobi Gallery.
Ministry of Discovery | Mika Obanda | Until 28 September
A solo showcase of new works by Mika Obanda
Skin as a Noun, as a Verb | Tevin Noel | Sena Art X Under The Swahili Tree, Karen | 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, “We do not simply grow; we unravel, rebuild, and reimagine ourselves in pieces.” Through three phases; Deep Introspection, Attempts at Actual Change, and Taking Form, this exhibition invites viewers into a meditative space of self-examination. Here, “skin” becomes a metaphor for memory, rupture, and quiet emergence.
Forms of Fray | Anita Kavochy, Jonathan Sölanke, Gathaara Fraser, Liz Kobusinge & Darlyne Komukama | The African Arts Trust | Opening Friday 15 August, 6pm-8pm. | Until 18 October
“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 — 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 Fraser’s 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.
Guardians of Memory | Njogu Kuria | Banana Hill Art Gallery | Until 28 November
Explore the art of memory. Discover breathtaking sculptures crafted from rubber, vinyl, and metal—each piece tells a story of resilience, culture, and identity.
Open daily.