Lot 18

Jackie Karuti (Kenyan, born 1987)
How Clouds Are Formed (Weather Instruments), 2019
Signed ‘Karuti, 2019’ (verso)
Graphite and coloured pencil on rag paper
57.5 x 77.5 cm
Ksh 270,000 – 395,000
(US$) 2,400 – 3,500
Provenance: direct from the artist

Bought in

Employing the process of drawing, video and performance to generate thought, Jackie Karuti’s practice explores ideas around knowledge production and accessibility, as well as the depths of possibility enabled by radical imagination.

This drawing forms part of a greater body of work called How Clouds Are Formed – a developing project, assembled in multiple parts, about giving life and language to as many dimensions as possible in an increasingly turbulent world. In the drawing, unexpected relationships between modes of measuring open non-linear ways to move through conceptual territory: a set of dimensions mark an area occupied by the cast light of a projector and the plane upon which the image is fixed, whilst also addressing impossible measurements and site visits.
Karuti was the 2020 recipient of the Henrike Grohs Art Award, which will see a publication of her work released in late 2021. This will be a visual workbook presenting a method and moment of study while navigating various site visits that sends one out in the field to move, question and discover.

Karuti is an alumnus of Àsìko, a roaming Pan African art school established by the late Bisi Silva. She received the Follow Fluxus-After Fluxus grant in 2021 and will have a residency and solo exhibition later in the year at the Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden. Karuti has participated in several international residencies including at WIELS Contemporary Art Center, Brussels, 2019; Gasworks, London, 2016; The Bag Factory, Johannesburg, 2014. Her work has been exhibited globally, including at The Lofoten International Art Festival, Norway, 2019 and Dak’Art Biennial, Senegal, 2018.