Rosemary Karuga

Rosemary Karuga, Shades of Noir. 

Rich, informative online tools such as Contemporary & keep the focus on African diaspora alive— its past, present, and future articulately discussed through a nuanced lens. It has been instrumental in uncovering artists unknown to contemporary art history books and scholarly research context. Several revered Black women artists were found here including Kenyan born painter Rosemary Karuga from their incredibly insightful Female Pioneer series— a look at women artists all over Africa making an impact.

Kenyan based writer Mbuthia Maina (who discussed Karuga in Kuona Trust’s Thelathini) said of Karuga’s work, “Karuga is a significant link between the past and future of women artists in East Africa today. She is also a respected innovator who dared to branch out and break new ground with her art, hence paving new pathways for others. Using the easily accessible material of newspapers and magazines, Karuga has over the years developed an approach to collage that at the time was unique in East Africa. Her images harness both extraordinary detail and charming simplicity.”

Kenyan Art Review. 

Rosemary Namuli Karuga was born in 1928 in Meru, Kenya. Irish nuns discovered her artistic talent and recommended higher education. She has the distinctive honor of being the first female student at Kampala, Uganda’s Makarere University in the 1950’s, studying design, sculpture, and painting. She eventually taught art in rural Kenya and married, having three children. At age 59, she was chosen as an artist-in-residence at the Paa ya Paa Arts Centre in Nairobi (the Paa ya Paa suffered a major fire in 1997 losing most of their prestigious collection).

Kenyan Art Review. 

Karuga’s colorful, stylized collages are comprised of carefully cut recycled newspapers, wrapper packaging, and other text based media. Her heavy bodied figures contain an effervescent energy that comes through their patterned clothes, expressive faces, and storied actions. Their bodies purposely move in and out of academia tradition— limbs have a sharp edged definition, hands and feet, however, have a deliberately grounded sameness. There is cleverly rendered weight in those hands and feet. Each narrative is rich with elaborate detail. From the colonizer language that repeatedly haunts the background to the brown toned occupants on top dressed in their printed fabrics and ancestral hairstyles, candidly revealing that changes are made and some parts are broken, but heritage remains strong and undeniable.

Kenyan Art Review. 

Untitled, 27” x 41,” collage, 1998, Red Hill Gallery. 

Karuga’s work has been exhibited worldwide— her native Kenya, England, France, Ireland, and the United States. At Studio Museum in Harlem’s eclectic 1990 Contemporary African Artists Changing Traditions exhibit, she was the only woman.

“Grace Stanislaus, a curator at the museum, selected nine artists from six countries where there is relatively easy foreign access to artists and some sense of artistic community. ‘Our institutional focus on the African continent is chiefly sub-Saharan Africa and those countries with a history and current activity in the visual arts,’ writes Kinshasha Holman Conwill, the director of the museum, in the catalogue. Almost all the art was borrowed from the artists themselves.”

Karuga is included in collections at the Red Hill Gallery, National Museums of Kenya, Murumbi Trust, the Watatu Foundation, and many others.

Rosemary Karuga is currently residing at the Amberly Nursing Home in Dublin, Ireland. She recently received a prestigious honor— a lifetime achievement award from the African Voice Newspaper. She is the first East African to be bestowed. It is for Africans living in Ireland contributing to Irish society.