Published 06 June 2025 in News
From 6 June to 2 August 2025, The African Arts Trust (TAAT) in Nairobi, Kenya, presents April Kamunde inaugural solo exhibition.
April Kamunde’s painting practice renders light in remarkable ways; with clarity, intention and reverence. Working primarily in figuration, Kamunde foregrounds moments in which African women are at rest, painting her sitters in vivid detail and highlighting relatively unspectacular moments — sitting cross-legged on a leso; basking, face lifted to the sun; napping under a tree; strolling; pausing with hands akimbo. Each scene occurs outdoors, surrounded in the green of nature. Writer and activist Jessica Horn, in the essay Capitalism’s Crisis of Care, posits that “The assertion of the right not to labour is an important one given that African women are expected to perpetually labour with little consideration for the right to rest.” Consequently, to witness Kamunde’s meticulous paintings attending to that which is often gendered unburdened time, is to resist this way of being, as signalled in the titles of a selection of her paintings, Sometimes Wellness Looks Like Stocking Up On Vitamin D And C (2024), Afueni Mdogo Mdogo I, Small Small Relief (2024) and Sijiskii (2023).
In her latest body of work, Fabric of our Being, an extension of the ongoing series Rest: The Pursuit of Peace, Kamunde further examines the dera. This dress features in her work as a motif for rest, and now, in these particular works, Kamunde teases out the more nuanced and sometimes contradictory perceptions and projections associated with this garment. Take for example, that the dera is a dress that often signals rest in its looseness and comfort, but for the artist and other women in her life, it also serves as a ‘uniform’ of sorts, suitable for chores around the house, for working from home and on and on. Additionally, the loose-fitting and light nature of the dress also straddles the line between modesty and sensuality in how it falls on the body, again suggesting a push and pull between respectability and presentability.
The exhibition is curated by Rosie Olang’ Odhiambo and Sharon Neema.
Images courtesy of Ian Gichohi.