THIS ARTIST EXPLORES THE PAST IN A NOSTALGIC EXHIBITION

 Kenyan artist Evans Mbugua’s research is a journey into the past to unravel what ails us today and how the past can help solve today’s problems. The exhibition, ‘Untold Stories’ which closed in February at Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi is both nostalgic and an eye opener to understanding the past in the present and the present in the past.  

The world is ever changing and views we held in the past seem like distant memory. Since childhood, we are raised to be forward thinkers and so tend to form our own memories. This means, our own memories travel as far back from our childhood and not beyond. Kenyan artist, Evans Mbugua, sought to move beyond our childhood and look into his lineage. This research bore the just concluded exhibition, ‘Untold Stories’ (21st January- 25th February, 2026) at Circle Art Agency’s Gallery in Nairobi. 

For over a decade now, Evans Mbugua has been exploring questions around identity and memory through portraits of people drawn from his everyday environment. The artist sought to understand how memory shapes our identity. His research blended well with the series ‘Back to the Future’ project (2018-2024), which he dedicated to his nephews and nieces. The artist found striking resemblance between his nephews and nieces’ growth and memories from his own. However, something was missing.

Indeed, Mbugua realized that there was little information about his past. He was living a life without an anchor. In school, we are taught history but much of it are bits and pieces of recorded history without much of the needed information to function well. Without an anchor, Mbugua turned to his parents to dig deeper into his past and at least find a bearing about his past. 

On his mother’s side, Mbugua persistently and patiently questioned his mother until her memory unlocked. She brought from her past events experienced during her childhood that were long silenced or buried in the form of sensitive fragments. And, Mbugua paid keen attention to this gradually unfolding testimony, which revealed both trauma and the emergence of a new form of complicity.  

In order to understand his father’s side, who died in 2011, Mbugua’s mother arranged a one of a kind re-union. In the re-union, Mbugua and the family met a 104 year old woman- close friend to paternal grandparents- with an incredible memory who shared intimate stories about paternal grandparents thus giving Mbugua insights into his father’s side. 

When we study colonial history, what we get in books and research papers is laced with dry facts but in the presence of this century old human encyclopaedia, Mbugua not only knew about the events of pre-colonial Kenya but experienced them. He understood family life and struggles that terminated into independence, post-independence and the present. But for Mbugua, the research is still ongoing. 

‘Untold Stories’ is just a fragment of his broader research. While at Circle Art Gallery, I got a glimpse of this research in form of paintings and art installations. Using acrylic paint and varnish on plexigas, Mbugua’s work is extraordinarily nostalgic. Like family portraits hang in a living room, the paintings are frozen in time. The paintings are supposed to trigger a journey in the past, refreshing memories that we may have forgotten and relieving past good times- the music, food, laughter and tears. Incredibly enough, the faces are blurred, I believe this was intentional so that all of us can implant our own memories and our own families. The installations, on the other hand give a picture of what documentation of individuals was like during the colonial period. For instance, the 'Kipande Case' is a massive box with grotesque chain- showing not only the burden of carrying it around but also what it represented; loss of freedom.

Mbugua is not the only artist who has attempted to retrace his part. Others have been on this journey before. One of Kenya’s best descriptive writer, the late Binyavanga Wainaina penned a short novel ‘Discovering Home’ in which he took us on a journey about his ancestry, another Kenya, Dr. Anne Mwiti, in her last exhibition, ‘The Essence, 2024’ like Binyavanga Wainaina, explored her ancestry and how the present day generations are mixture of tribes and cultures. Mbugua, on the other hand, in ‘Untold Stories’ is yearning to fill the gap. The gap of missing information about his past. And on this journey, he discovered the history of colonization and struggle for independence and how his immediate family was tied in the struggle. 

So, instead of only learning about the games his father and mother played, the schools they attended, he was confronted by ugly monster of colonialism, liberation and the birth of the nation Kenya. Even though, the exhibition does not represent colonial or post-colonial Kenya, it alludes to it with installations like ‘Kipande Case,’ and ‘Passport.’ 

However, it is the family which Mbugua has dedicated most of his work. The journey begins with a portrait of his mother in the 70s and that of his father and how the two merged to form a family. Through this, the artist deviates from collective Kenyan history to an intimate one, the history of a forgotten Kenya – normal family life and how the growth of the family has been the pivotal point of the growth of Kenya. 

In spite of wanton corruption, tribalism which leads to tribal clashes, and incompetent leadership, Kenya has been held together by family and the dedication of parents to their individual families. The state may be dysfunctional but family has always worked. However, within the veneer of a ‘happy’ family, Mbugua in his research was confronted with an ugly truth: silence. Family is never perfect and there are scars from our past that parents never talk about. And, thus through ‘Untold Stories’ Mbugua questions the idea that silence is absolute. That is why he was relentless because he had discovered that silence had been used to bury some of the atrocities that were committed to specific individuals in the past and therefore, some atrocities and been normalized. Moments once considered banal or insignificant, because they belonged to everyday life, took on new and layered meaning. Evans Mbugua’s work thus opens a space for narratives long held back, allowing them to re-emerge within the artistic and memorial field. 

Evans Mbugua is a graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts de Pau in 2005, where he studied Graphic Design. Thereafter he began his professional career in Toulouse as an art director in visual communication. However, in 2012, he relocated to Paris and committed himself fully to his artistic practice. This bore his maiden gallery exhibitions in 2015, followed by solo exhibitions in Paris (2016) , and London (2017.)

Since then, his work has gained international recognition and has been presented in numerous gallery exhibitions and art fairs across Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America. His paintings and sculptures were shown at the 19th Asian Art Biennale of Bangladesh (2022), the 59th Venice Art Biennale (2022) at AKKA Project gallery, and the 14th Dakar Biennale (2022) at Galerie Arte.