Kaloki Nyamai

James Cohan is pleased to present Twe Vaa, an exhibition of mixed media paintings by Kenyan artist Kaloki Nyamai, on view from March 28 through May 4, 2024, at 48 Walker Street. This marks the artist’s New York debut and first solo exhibition with the gallery. 

Twe Vaa means “We are here" in the artist’s ancestral language of Kikamba. The phrase signifies a declaration of presence, a reclamation of a collective agency. Nyamai questions where it is that society has landed in turbulent times. In the ten intricately layered paintings from Nyamai’s ongoing series Dining in Chaos, he draws inspiration from life in Nairobi, weaving collective memories that emerge and recede from legibility. His paintings are composites of multiple canvases and materials, literally stitching together the fabric of a community scarred by the legacy of colonization. 

In each work, Nyamai juxtaposes news accounts of political unrest with depictions of people at leisure, allowing multiple narratives to unfold simultaneously. He photo-transfers newsprint and images capturing pivotal and often violent moments in Kenyan history and other parts of Africa directly onto the surface of his paintings; binding the past and the present. These figures fade in and out of view, much like a memory, revealing themselves through layers of paper and paint.