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Master Class combines artworks by more than 65 alumni and current students who studied in the Painting and Drawing department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) between 2000 and 2025. This exhibition, on view from April 19 through June 21, 2025, at SECRIST | BEACH in Chicago, is guest-curated by SAIC President Emerita Elissa Tenny and SAIC professor, chair of SAIC’s Painting and Drawing department, and art historian Lisa Wainwright.

In a new body of work titled Re-Membering, Mathenge delves into an expansive study of Kenyan, specifically Kikuyu, culture, history, and language within a social and political context profoundly and open-endedly impacted by the legacy of colonialism.  By researching traditional African artefacts and reading the biographies of both Indigenous peoples and colonisers, Mathenge has taken part in a continual process of rebuilding her family’s cultural memory, working against the intergenerational erasure that results when the monolithic structures and supremacy mindset of settler colonialism usurps traditional practices. 

 The Human Situation: Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel, Sylvia Sleigh. The exhibition, conceived by Saara Pritchard, will mark the first focused presentation of Marcia Marcus (1928–2025), Alice Neel (1900–1984), and Sylvia Sleigh (1916–2010), who each worked in New York City and shared in its artistic circles in the dynamic decades of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. During this period, they portrayed mutual sitters, exhibited together, and participated in public discussions. Their representations of loved ones, friends, and acquaintances are distinctive in form and style, yet share in their evocation of the human spirit, capturing Sleigh’s reflection “The human situation adds a certain poignancy to portraits...”

Koyo Kouoh, who will curate the 2026 Venice Biennale, has assembled a huge survey at the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels presenting Black life on its own, frequently gorgeous, ... I loved the pairing in this section of two radically different paintings that upended the traditional Western “odalisque,” or eroticized reclining nude: the Kenyan painter Wangari Mathenge’s “Sundials and Sonnets” (2019), a large, realist portrait of a woman in a blue bathing suit who fixes us in her gaze as she reclines languidly on a bright yellow sofa, was hung next to the American artist Henry Taylor’s “Ly for Me” (2010), a small, impressionistic image of a woman lying on an ornate couch in a cluttered living room.

2024 Additions Include Works by More Than 60 Rising and Canonical Artists Including Laurie Anderson, Theaster Gates, Nancy Holt, Wangari Mathenge, Rashid Johnson, Mika Rottenberg and Dread Scott

I am regularly drawn to the work of contemporary Kenyan artist Wangari Mathenge. Her 2021 painting “The Ascendants XIX (Her Things Are Here)” gives an overview of a green table with cosmetic items, make-up bags and flowers arranged on its surface. We also see a pair of women’s hands with slim fingers. The right hand stirs a cup of coffee and the left cradles a book, the thumb serving as a place marker. It seems such a simple, commonplace scene. But what I like so much about this work is its sense of perspective.

Observing footage of her own sleeping body in semi-lucid reverie and painting her fluctuating states, the Kenya-born artist captures altered states of consciousness as hallucinatory windows into the unknown.

After working in the global financial market for years, Wangari Mathenge  began focusing on art full time just 5 years ago. Her latest installation at the Nicola Vassell Gallery, Bedimmed Boundaries: Between Wakefulness and Sleep, explores the periods of alternate consciousness

On View presents images from noteworthy exhibitions Nearly 60 works by 50 artists working in a range of mediums are featured. Many of the selections are recent acquisitions. The diverse, intergenerational slate of participating artists includes Michael Armitage, Mark Bradford, Garrett Bradley, Anthony Cudahy, Theaster Gates, David Hammons, Sky Hopinka, Rashid Johnson, Rachel Jones, Simone Leigh, Wangari Mathenge, Senga Nengudi, Noah Purifoy (1917-2004), Tavares Strachan, Nari Ward, Charles White (1918-1979), David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992), and potter David Drake (1800-1865), among others. CT

For centuries, painters have taken creative liberties when depicting their sitters’ attire, whether for sheer visual impact or to imbue their works with symbolic significance. This phenomenon, in which the artist doubles as stylist, has been the subject of recent solo shows, including exhibitions on Gilded Age master, John Singer Sargent, and purveyor of contemporary cool, Barkley L. Hendricks. Today, a new generation of sartorially savvy artists are leading the charge, capturing clothing to stunning effect – but rather than merely painting fashion, these women consider style as a means to convey notions of heritage, pride, and power.

Conversation on the Collection - Wangari Mathenge. The Crocker Art Museum is the oldest art museum in the Western United States, located in Sacramento, California. Founded in 1885, the museum holds one of the premier collections of Californian art. The collection includes American works dating from the Gold Rush to the present, European paintings and master drawings, one of the largest international ceramics collections in the U.S., and collections of Asian, African, and Oceanic art. The Crocker Art Museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.

For reasons that are difficult to pinpoint, studies of painting have omitted a specific motif, that of the women depicted sitting alone in their interior; yet, this representation crosses centuries and continents with remarkable insistence. The’ book takes over this neglected subject, proposing three readings. L’une, purely visual, offering from page to page a gallery of paintings of various notoriety; the second, of sociological nature, is, s’ endeavoring to examine the implications of this posture and the causes of its recurrence; the last finally, of’a more creative order, affixing to the works short texts of’a free fiction. 

How have artists from the African continent and its diaspora experienced and artistically processed everyday life over the last 100 years? To answer this question, the team led by Koyo Kouoh, Director and Chief Curator of the Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, South Africa, undertook intensive research. The result is a comprehensive show that brings together works by 156 artists: a kaleidoscope dedicated to African figurative painting of the last 100 years. The museum has thus succeeded in creating a ground-breaking exhibition that demands to be seen - and which will find its way to the Kunstmuseum Basel in 2024.

Moreover: 50 Paintings is the sister exhibition to the Milwaukee Art Museum’s,  Paintings, contemporaneous exhibitions that together feature the work of one hundred artists. Organized as a ‘survey,’ Moreover also celebrates contemporary painting’s pluralistic leanings while furthering comparative analysis in the visual language.

For this In The Studio, arts journalist Anna Bailey follows Wangari as she creates her second immersive experience at the Pippy Houldsworth Gallery. It’s a life-sized replica of her Nairobi studio and this is where she invited 20 female domestic workers to have a day of rest, while also painting large-scale portraits of them for a new series of work which celebrates female domestic workers in Kenya.

Explore the complexities of visibility in our latest exhibition, When You See Me: Visibility in Contemporary Art/History. The exhibition aims to broaden and complicate official histories and their corresponding visual strategies to allow for richer representations of those who have been traditionally excluded or erased. 

In a painting from the series A Day of Rest, the London and Chicago based painter Wangari Mathenge depicts three women sitting by the fireplace in her studio in Kenya. Subtitled Kemunto, Mary and Sarah (2023), a short-haired lady in a green dress places her hand on one of her friend’s foreheads as they stare back at her, resting their hand on her shoulder. The third woman gazes into the distance while the pair interact. While it is unclear exactly what is happening in the piece, Wangari paints the details of their braids and afro-textured hair, their nonchalant facial expressions and the colours of their clothes, with a carefulness, warmth and precision. 

ON VIEW WANGARI MATHENGE (AMERICAN, BORN KENYA, 1973) Oil and oil stick on canvas, 96 in. x 290 in. Crocker Art Museum purchase with funds provided by Simon K. Chiu in honor of the Crocker's staff, docents, volunteers, and supporters, 2023.57.1

The painter left a lucrative career as an attorney to become an artist. Four years later, ahead of the opening “Tidal Wave of Colour,” she has no regrets

Tidal Wave of Colour is an ode to the art and the artists that served as an inspiration to Mathenge in her development as an artist, from individual ideas to larger movements. It is as a student learning an all-encompassing encyclopedia of works, viewed through the lens of race, class, and geography, that she connected with art in a way that was deeper, and more realized.

Published to accompany a major exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA, CapeTown, When We See Us presents a comprehensive exploration of Black representation through portraiture and figuration, celebrating Black subjectivity and Black consciousness from Pan-African and Pan-Diasporic perspectives. In the past decade, figurative painting by Black artists has risen to a new prominence in the field of contemporary art. This timely and revelatory book highlights the many ways in which artists critically engage with notions of blackness, contributing to the critical discourse on topics such as Pan-Africanism, the Civil Rights Movement, African Liberation and Independence movements, the Anti-Apartheid and Black Consciousness mobilizations, Decoloniality, and Black Lives Matter.

She also points to a painting by Wangari Mathenge, a self-portrait of the Chicago-based Kenyan artist, scantily clad and lounging on a sofa, her gaze a challenge to the viewer. “It’s full of assertion,” says Kouoh. “And I love it. It’s extremely empowering.” The exhibition is sponsored by Gucci, which is helping to take the discussion to a broader audience via its social channels, bringing these paintings about representation and identity back into the online spaces that often influence them. 

When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting comprises an exhibition, publication and discursive programming that explores Black self-representation and celebrates global Black subjectivities and Black consciousness from pan-African and pan-diasporic perspectives. It boldly brings together artworks from the last 100 years, by Black artists working globally, into dialogue with leading Black thinkers, writers and poets who are active today. 

The Kenyan-born artist Wangari Mathenge returns to London with her second solo show in the city. On display are the artist's paintings and installation from her latest series, A Day of Rest, which explores the plight of domestic workers in Kenya—often women who through the country's precarious labour laws are left unprotected from mistreatment and abuse. The paintings are portraits of actual Kenyan women who Mathenge invited to relax and tell stories in her studio last year. “Mathenge joined them in varied discussions that included subjects such as spirituality, finances, education, feminism, and the need for rest and reflection,” a gallery statement says.

After The Break (2022), a painting by artist Wangari Mathenge, takes us inside a home, where a person appears before an upholstered chair and ottoman covered in a tropical leaf pattern. The space is accented by actual flora—raspberry tiger lilies and kelly green lemongrass—along with a teacup and a clementine. The subject, most likely a woman, is stretched over the ottoman, legs and head not pictured, but presumed to be dangling. The body language hits a familiar nerve; they’re either in distress or taking respite amid struggle.

A trip back to her childhood home in Hampstead Garden Suburb in 2016 inspired some thrilling new work. She recreated her Hampstead sitting room in forensic detail. Carefully piecing together photographs, memories, and conversations, this time-capsule interior was about as true to the original as it’s possible to be – from the doilies that cover the chairs to the Jungle Book viewfinder on the side table, and her parents’ ABBA and Cliff Richard records. 

Over the past two decades contemporary African art has taken its rightful place on the world stage. Today, African artists work outside the confines of limiting categories and outdated perceptions; they produce art that is as much a reflection of Africa’s tumultuous past as it is a vision of its boundless future.

Great Women Painters is a groundbreaking book that reveals a richer and more varied telling of the story of painting. Featuring more than 300 artists from around the world, it includes both well-known women painters from history and today's most exciting rising stars.

Perspectives, the first solo show by Wangari Mathenge in Italy. The artist creates powerful large-scale paintings confronting issues regarding the visibility of the black female in the context of both the traditional African patriarchal society and the Diaspora.

Relocation, acculturation, displacement, and specifically how these concepts relate to the diasporic African experience are central to the work of Kenyan-born, Chicago-based artist Wangari Mathenge. In her series "The Ascendants", Mathenge is less interested in capturing individual likenesses and instead attempts to render the complexity of identity and aspects of life for Africans living abroad in large interior scenes.

After The Break (2022), a painting by artist Wangari Mathenge takes us inside a home, where a person appears before an upholstered chair and ottoman covered in a tropical leaf pattern. The space is accented by actual flora—raspberry tiger lilies and kelly green lemongrass—along with a teacup and a clementine. The subject, most likely a woman, is stretched over the ottoman, legs and head not pictured, but presumed to be dangling. The body language hits a familiar nerve; they’re either in distress or taking respite amid struggle.

Pippy Houldsworth Gallery presents You Are Here, the first UK solo exhibition of US-based Kenyan artist Wangari Mathenge. The exhibition draws on early memories and personal observations to address the diasporic experience of home and establishing oneself at a distance from one’s cultural origin. You Are Here also includes the artist’s first large-scale installation. This work, incorporating Mathenge’s first stop-motion animation, will invite the viewer to step into the space of her paintings.

The first major UK solo exhibition from the US-based Kenyan artist Wangari Mathenge will illustrate her personal experience of relocation, responding to questions of race and acculturation. In a series of large paintings titled The Ascendants (including XIII above), she depicts figures in domestic situations demonstrating the juxtaposition of relocation, along with everyday objects that serve as cultural reminders of one’s heritage. Accompanying this series will be an installation of a living space from the Seventies, which is reminiscent of the years the artist spent in London, with a vintage television playing a stop-motion animation.

Wangari Mathenge was 31 and working as a lawyer in Massachusetts when she began to take art classes. “I was always good at art,” she says. “And I thought I’d go to art school, but my parents had other ideas.” So she studied business instead, and then law, leaving Nairobi for Washington

Like Sickert, the Chicago-based Kenyan artist Wangari Mathenge knows something about interiors and interior lives; unlike Sickert’s women, however, those in Mathenge’s explosively colourful domestic settings – replete with Kanga textiles and other signifiers of their subjects’ East African heritage – have agency, either contemplating themselves and their own thoughts or observing us, the viewer, with magnificent hauteur.

UN Women, the agency of the United Nations dedicated to gender equality and women’s empowerment, will host the first all-Black, all-women global selling exhibition and auction titled “A Force for Change”, with proceeds benefiting Black women across the world and the participating artists. The exhibition includes 26 works by prominent and emerging female artists of African descent to recognize and elevate awareness of the transformative power of Black women’s art in social justice movements, and to support UN Women’s nascent global Black Women’s Programme. Works by artists Cinthia Sifa Mulanga, Tschabalala Self, Sungi Mlengeya, Wangari Mathenge, Zanele Muholi, and Selly Rabe Kane are included, among many others.

“The Ascendants XI (Homage to Ecclesiastes Three, One Through Eight)” (2021), made exclusively for T by the Chicago-based artist Wangari Mathenge, who said: “As part of the diaspora, I’m interested in what can ease the sense of displacement. The figures here might long to step out into a different kind of world, but for now they sit in comfortable silence in a shared space they’ve created for themselves

This past week we hit 11C in New York. It’s not exactly spring yet, but after what feels like an incredibly long winter, the slight rise in temperature was enough to get me scouring the internet for exhibitions welcoming masked visitors. I’ve been so cautious and homebound the past few months, and I’ve missed venturing out to see art in real life, up close and personal.

Mathenge blends the historic and the contemporary. Giving voice and context to the experiences of women, her layered scenes reflect customary African society through the lens of the current moment. Produced in 2019 and 2020, her series "The Expats" and "The Ascendents" feature women in familial scenes. The images portray non-Western migrants and explore the socioeconomic and political implications of their status. Her subjects exude pride and dignity, refusing to allow the discrimination and othering they bear to shape their identity or define their humanity.

The increased visibility for black figurative painters has led to a shift in the dialogue around painting and identity and has given more black artists the opportunity to showcase their work in places where they had previously been excluded.