Artist April Kamunde's pursuit of peace in new exhibition

What would happen if we all slowed down and took a pause from the rat race to let off steam inscribed by the ‘hustle culture’?

It is the subject of a new exhibition ‘Fabric of Our Being’ by the Kenyan artist April Kamunde on display at the African Arts Trust in Nairobi.

The colourful showcase features vivid paintings with humorous titles, in which Kamunde highlights moments in which African women are at rest outdoors, surrounded by the green in nature.

One of the pieces is titled ‘I Don’t Want a Seat at the Table of the Oppressor. I Want a Blanket and a Pillow Down by the Ocean. I Want to Rest.’

It shows a woman in a bright yellow dera, the traditional long, flowing gown worn by Muslim women—especially along the coast, sleeping on a leso spread under the shade on a lawn. Her sandals are beside her.

The showcase is an extension of Kamunde’s ongoing series ‘Rest: The Pursuit of Peace’, which the painter has been working on since leaving her corporate job in 2020.

She says it was borne of “a state of deep fatigue” within herself and many of the women in her life.

“By the time the Covid pandemic hit, I was exhausted from the increasing demands that life kept throwing my way. I realised it cut across several of my friends, including those who are married and have children,” she tells Citizen Digital.

The artist had been commissioned work before that but after resigning to “pause” and pursue her artistic practice full-time, producing personal, original pieces.

“I was happy being at home, not going outside and it was the first time I was properly painting in a long time,” the 37-year-old says, describing it as an “exhalation process.”

It is not surprising, then, that rest as a subject came naturally to her.

“People need space to find reprieve from the rat race. I am more interested in rest not through exotic holidays but things that do not cost money; accessible things like public parks and nature,” says Kamunde.

In another piece, ‘Ota Jua, Tuliza Roho: Even the Grounded Need Grounding’, another woman in a red dera and yellow headscarf sits on a sunny lawn, facing away, while examining a plant sprig.

The dera, Swahili adaptation of the Somali dirac, is recurrent in Kamunde’s pieces, and she uses it as a motif for rest, while also exploring the nuanced and sometimes contradictory perceptions associated with the garment.

To some, it signals rest and ‘laziness’ in its looseness and comfort, but to others, it also serves as a uniform of sorts for the tasking house chores.

It is a garment, she says, which also straddles between modesty and sensuality in how it falls on African women’s bodies, “as if to suggest an oscillation between respectability and presentability.”

Kamunde’s work has been shown in exhibitions in Africa and beyond, and she was in 2024 awarded the (WAFT (Writer’s and Artist Fellowship for Travel) facilitated by Wangechi Mutu Studio.

In the middle of our fast-paced lifestyles, her newest pieces invite us to dream and re-evaluate the connection we have with our time and pleasure.

“I want to challenge people to think about how they can achieve rest for themselves,” Kamunde says.

‘Fabric of Our Being’ runs through August 2.