Agnès Waruguru’s works are constantly linked to painting and its relations with design, embroidery, sculpture, and installation through ideas of geographical belonging, time, and transience. For the Biennale Arte, Waruguru is showing paintings in a traditional format and an installation that contains organic materials, establishing a relationship between her research and the book Vagabonds! (2022) by the Nigerian writer Eloghosa Osunde. Part of the book revolves around the relationships between spiritual life and everyday life in large cities, between what is visible and invisible. As characters move between different worlds and situations, the artist invites the spectator to move around her work and establish relations with this literary narrative and the links between the organic and the industrial, or time and space. Behind gestures and forms that seem both abstract and formally minimalist, the artist silently leads us to reflect on the passage of time and the possible future of some of these materials. To which ecosystems do these materials belong? Which of these materials, seen within the context of the Biennale Arte, can be regarded as “foreign”? In what ways can these materials be associated with life and death?
This is the first time the work of Agnes Waruguru is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Raphael Fonseca
