Longinos Nagila, From Here to When, 2019, Mixed Media, Dimensions Variable
Courtesy of the artist and Circle Art Gallery
Circle, founded in 2012, is creating a strong and sustainable art market for East African artists by supporting and promoting innovative artists currently practicing. In 2015, Circle opened a gallery space in Nairobi aiming to become the foremost exhibition space in East Africa. It exhibits carefully curated modern and contemporary art and invites guest curators to collaborate. Circle also holds an annual auction of Modern and Contemporary East African art in Nairobi.
Asteria Malinzi
Sydney Mang’ong’o
Boniface Maina
Dennis Muraguri
Longinos Nagila is a young experimental multi media visual artist living and working in Nairobi. Primarily focusing on video art and the exploration of digital
imagery, Longinos’ work is influenced by a deep love of early cinema and black and white photography, which he blends with paint and transferred images on
paper and canvas. After graduating from the Buruburu institute of Fine Arts, Nairobi in 2009 he studied documentary and film making at the Apulia Film
Commission in Bari, Italy.
Nagila’s practice investigates the process and implications of mass production, industrialization and rapid urbanization. Most rencently, Nagila has taken a
notably formal turn, centering on the relationship between shapes and surfaces. This work on paper is also a personal interrogation of what constitutes an art
object, the materials in art and the process of art making from an anthropological point of. He approaches this work as a form of performance involving the work and the viewer. Its not enough to view this work from a single standing position. The process of making this work – the very precise, repetitive, controlled
manipulation of paper with a blade has itself taken on a performative quality for him.
Nagila has participated in numerous exhibitions both locally and internationally, along with participation in several art fairs. Recent group exhibitions include:
Proximity to Power, Circle Art Gallery/ Goethe Insitut Nairobi, 2017; African Voices National Gallery of Zimbabwe, 2017; Freedom Flight Refuge, Circle Art
Gallery, 2016, Error X, Ostrale, Dresden, 2016. He has had several solo exhibitions including: In Search of Alternative Utopias, The Art Space, Nairobi, 2017; Democracy My Piss, Kuona Trust, Nairobi, 2016; Technicians of the Sacred, The Art Space, Nairobi, 2016. Nagila’s work has also been shown in international art
fairs – AKAA Paris, 2016, and 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London, 2017.
Danda Jaroljmek, Director
910 James Gichuru Road
Lavington
00800
Nairobi, Kenya
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