WANGARI MATHENGE

Conceived of in 2021, Mathenge’s series The Expats and The Ascendants explore themes of relocation and displacement. The Expats responds to Mawuna Remarque Koutonin’s essay, ‘Why are white people expats when the rest of us are immigrants?’ which demonstrates how two seemingly interchangeable words, expat and immigrant, are used as racial signifiers associated with perceived wealth or poverty. In these works, Mathenge is directly inspired by photographs from her childhood, drawing on her family’s experience of living in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. The Ascendants, which in common with The Expats draws on Mathenge’s personal experience, explores relocation and acculturation in relation to diasporic communities. Large-scale canvases present warm snapshots from within the home, with figures surrounded by everyday objects that act as markers of time, location, and culture. Mathenge revisits these themes in her 2025 Re-Membering series, works that delve into an expansive study of Kenyan, specifically Kikuyu, culture, history, and language, working against intergenerational erasure.

In her 2023 series, A Day of Rest, Mathenge revisits narratives of displacement through a study of female domestic workers in Kenya, an increasingly marginalised group who leave their rural communities for work only to find themselves subject to unstable working rights and an increased risk of sexual and gender-based violence. Through her monumental portraits of these women at rest, Mathenge aims to raise awareness and advocate for the wellbeing of this community.

Just as she re-created a room from her childhood North London home for her first solo exhibition with Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in 2021, You Are Here, in her 2023 exhibition, A Day of Rest, Mathenge presented the gallery as a replica of her current Nairobi studio. Swapping the 1970s family living room of her 2021 exhibition for a warm, therapeutic setting, Mathenge housed her multifaceted paintings in the same environment that prompted them. Both self-assured in their gesture and downward gaze, and tender in their collective, quiet intimacy, Mathenge’s portraits compel the viewer to perceive the hardships that these individual women face, and the generative potential of rest.

Pippy Houldsworth Gallery