Wangari Mathenge Brings Kenyan Memory and Women’s Craftsmanship to New York
By LLK Digital
For her latest exhibition in New York, the Kenyan artist turned to her mother and a group of women in their eighties, bringing generations of craftsmanship into the contemporary art world.
For Kenyan artist Wangari Mathenge, preparing for her latest exhibition in New York meant returning to something much closer to home: her mother’s knitting circle.
In an unexpected collaboration, Mathenge enlisted her mother and several of her friends in Nairobi, all in their eighties, to help create two sculptures for Re-membering, her first solo exhibition at Lévy Gorvy Dayan in New York.
The women brought skills they had learned decades earlier, some of which they had not practised in years. What began as an artistic collaboration became a shared experience that eventually inspired the women to establish their own knitting club.
Their handiwork now forms part of an exhibition exploring Kenyan history, cultural identity and the traditions passed between generations.
A Different Kind of Inheritance
Born in Nairobi, Mathenge has built an international reputation for richly coloured paintings depicting Black figures in intimate domestic settings. Her work frequently examines questions of identity and belonging, informed by her experiences living between Kenya and Britain.
With Re-membering, she takes that exploration further.
The exhibition brings together five new paintings and her first publicly exhibited sculptures, drawing inspiration from Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance.
One of the sculptures, The Shape of Inheritance, reimagines traditional Gikuyu dress through an elaborate knitted garment. Its form references both historical Kenyan clothing and Victorian fashion, reflecting how colonial influence altered local traditions of dress.
Another, Before Us, After Us, Ever Changing, incorporates a wooden doorframe intricately carved by artisans in Malindi. Inspired by the historic carved doors of Lamu, the work brings the architectural heritage of Kenya’s coast into a contemporary New York gallery.
The Women Behind the Work
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the exhibition is the role played by the women who helped create it.
For Mathenge, their participation was not simply about producing the sculptures. It was also an opportunity to reconnect with skills, memories and experiences that might otherwise remain outside the contemporary art conversation.
Knitting itself carries a complicated history in Kenya. During the colonial period, European missionaries introduced Western forms of dress and encouraged women to adopt new textile practices, often at the expense of existing clothing traditions.
By using those same techniques to reinterpret historical Kenyan garments, Mathenge brings together different periods of the country’s history within a single work.
The collaboration also gave the women an unexpected opportunity to see their skills recognised in an international art setting.
Kenyan History, Seen from New York
Alongside the sculptures, Mathenge’s new paintings revisit the cultural changes surrounding Kenya’s independence in 1963.
Set in richly detailed interiors inspired by the 1960s, they feature women surrounded by books, textiles, maps and domestic objects. Their surroundings offer clues to the ways history shapes everyday life, even generations later.
For an artist whose career has taken her from Nairobi to international galleries and museum collections, Re-membering is a particularly personal project.
It brings together her research into Kenya’s colonial past, her interest in the complexities of cultural identity and the practical knowledge of women from her own community.
And while the exhibition is taking place thousands of kilometres from Nairobi, some of its most meaningful contributions were made much closer to home.
Wangari Mathenge: Re-membering opened at Lévy Gorvy Dayan in New York on 17 September 2026. The gallery currently lists the exhibition through 28 October 2026.
