Kaloki Nyamai: Tukilile Vaa

January 14 - February 27, 2026
Institute for the Humanities Gallery, 202 S. Thayer
Gallery Hours: M-F 9am-5pm

Kaloki Nyamai is a multidisciplinary artist based in Nairobi. His practice explores Kenya's histories and collective memory, blending Kamba traditions with contemporary narratives. Using acrylic paint, rope, photo transfers, and stitched yarn, his free-hanging immersive works blur the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and installation. For his U-M project, Nyamai will present one large unstretched piece and two framed paintings at the Institute for the Humanities, as well as a second free-hanging work at the U-M Museum of Art.

The physicality of his complex constructions inspire wonder in the viewer. The works are vast in scale, embedded with stories, where past and future merge both poetically and conceptually. In each composition, the artist proposes a powerful alternative to the flatness of singular narratives of Kenyan history and identity presented as the definitive postcolonial account. He likens the formal act of stitching to symbolically unifying a wounded or fractured community.

Nyamai founded the Kamene Cultural & Research Center in Nairobi, a creative and collaborative hub dedicated to the preservation, promotion, and innovation of African cultural practices.

Kaloki Nyamai is the 2025-26 William and Sally Searle Visiting Artist at the Institute for the Humanities.

As part of Nyamai's exhibition, a large mixed media work titled Tusukane is currently on view in the U-M Museum of Art's Gallery of African Art through Spring 2026.

Kaloki Nyamai (*1985 in Kitui, Kenya) is a multidisciplinary artist working with installation, painting, and sculpture living and working in Nairobi. From an early age, his mother introduced him to painting and taught him to draw, fostering an ever-lasting interest in art throughout his life. He often finds inspiration in his grandmother’s stories of the Kamba people, a Bantu ethnic group of eastern Kenya. Using materials like acrylic paint, sisal rope, photo transfers, and stitched yarn, Nyamai’s free-hanging pieces evoke the healing of historical wounds and a collective yearning for renewal. His works blur the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and installation, creating cohesive, immersive experiences where past, present, and future converge poetically.

Nyamai studied Interior Design at the Buruburu Institute Of Fine Arts (BIFA) and then pursued painting after working in other creative fields. His large-scale paintings and mixed-media installations intricately explore historical narratives, examining their resonance in the present. Nyamai has shown his work across the globe in solo exhibitions at the Norval Foundation, Cape Town (2024); James Cohan Gallery, New York (2024); Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin (2023 and 2022); SEPTIEME Gallery, Paris (2019), and other venues. In 2023, he featured part of his series Dining in Chaos in the “Unlimited” section at Art Basel in Basel. He has participated in group exhibitions and biennials, most recently at the Sharjah Biennial 16, Sharjah (2025); The Völklinger Hütte, Völklingen (2024); the Kenyan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Venice (2022); and the Dakar Biennale (2022). His works are part of numerous private and institutional collections around the world, such as the Dallas Art Museum, the Southern African Foundation for Contemporary Art, and the Arthur Primas Museum.