Photo courtesy of Antje Sauer

300cmx400cm |Collage | Image transfer |Acrylics| oils on canvas | 2022

In Trail of Pursuit is a series of large-format paintings visualizing socio-political structures. In these works, there are transfers of found archive and newspaper material onto canvases using image transfer techniques. Therefore develops dense collages, which then painted over. They show people in Kenya in moments of waiting – at the polls, at land allocations, in schools or at border posts. Painterly interventions alluding to cultural identity, property and political coding overlay the documentary planes. Motifs like cherry blossoms or floral ornaments signify the coming of spring along with anticipated change. Queues symbolize the act of navigating through physical and metaphorical systems alike, embodying the interplay between patience and impatience, individual hope and collective order. These everyday occurrences are transformed into a complex narrative about social spheres, rules and realities. Queuing thus turns out as a social choreography in which power relations, hope, exclusion and belonging are manifested. Gestures of waiting are universal, but the specific conditions vary greatly: who gets in line and who is left out? The depicted figures refer to questions of visibility in public space and at the same time negotiate the relationship between individual needs and collective conditions as a shared experience of standstill.

Text courtesy of; Anna Nowak, Kunsthaus Hamburg