Original artwork

Edition 1 of 1

Paint on repurposed London bus panel 

29.5 x 42cm

Shabu Mwangi (Founder)

Shabu Mwangi (b. 1985) is a professional contemporary artist living and working in the Mukuru Lunga Lunga of Nairobi, Kenya. He established the Wajukuu Arts Project in 2013 with the intention of stregthening the lives of his neighbors through the arts. His work is both informed by and highlights the community, his relationship to it, and the stories of its people.

Mwangi works primarily with oil paint, sculpture, and installation, referencing the multitudes of change and stagnation in our very different, but shared world. His work examines the societal inequalities that are enforced by modernity, culture, and politics. However reactionary to these things, his paintings originate from within himself. He paints to look inward, to dig deep into identity, love, death, and reality. Painting, for Shabu, is a way of responding to and coping with the pain of internal and external conflict. Painting from the psyche, as opposed to from reproduction, allows him to better act on the pain of the problems around him. Shabu Mwangi has so successfully created solutions for those around him by acknowledging reality in its totality; happiness and sadness, good and bad.

His label as an artist acts as a sort of teleportation device, allowing him to see beyond the horizon of his environment. While his travels to Europe or America have highlighted the inequalities of his nation, they have also gifted him with an altered state of mind. It is that of personal freedom. A state of mind that comes from the appreciation of life and the tools to shape one's environment. If his artistic practice is an investigation of the world's effect on him, then his work with Wajukuu is an experiment with his effect on the world. Over its lifetime, he has used Wajukuu as a vessel to share this freedom. By sharing knowledge, resources, and appreciation, Wajukuu attempts to undo the political framework that constrains the lives of its community, one challenge at a time.

Shabu is an incredibly inspirational artist that we are truly honoured to work with.

Shipping Costs: 

UK: £20.00

Europe: £30.00

Worldwide: £50.00

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