Guest Post: Beatrice Njoroge and the Gallery of Contemporary African Art

Photo by Kamau Mucocki

My friend, co-founder of GOCAA, and contributor herself, Susan Mathenge has been very active in trying to promote awareness and interest in the talented and often unnoticed artists emerging out of Kenya and the rest of Africa. According to her, "this blog is primarily about the culture of the african diaspora. the arts (particularly music) is where we as africans stand on par with or above everyone else. in that space there are so many people (african or not) documenting, interpreting, re-interpreting our culture in photography, film, video, print. i mostly use this as a space to collect all the information people, images, ideas that i come across on the web and elsewhere."

"Lola" by Susan Mathenge

Beatrice Njoroge's work "takes a psychological look into everday life and its relative resemblance to people everywhere around the globe. " Her pieces in this series combine the suggestive look of text and the texture of paint and materials to convey the lost feeling of hand-written communication. As we neglect this personal form of communication, what does it say about the ways we communicate to each other now. "The contrast between abstraction, text, montage and layering and the image of the face on several of my paintings is to explore the notion of the self through the perception of the other."

"RSVP2" by Beatrice Njoroge

There are some great images up on GOCAA's site. Please take a look and support their work.