Wanja Kimani, Carapace #2, 2022. Digital C-Type print. Image courtesy of the artist.
Wanja Kimani is a visual artist, writer and curator based in rural Northamptonshire, UK. Her research interests lie in the intersection of art, evolutionary ecology and the politics of gender and sexuality. Through performance, film, text and textiles, she explores memory through the body and the fluidity within social structures that are designed to care and protect, but mutate into coercive forces within society. In 2021, she was commissioned by the Women’s Art Collection to respond to their exhibition, 'Maud Sulter: The Centre of the Frame’ and she created a film and publication, Tongues, which explored fairytales, language and black girlhood. In 2022, she was one of the artists to represent Kenya at the 59th Venice Biennale. In her current body of work, she is playing with words, landscape and the body.
She has engaged in international curatorial projects with a range of artists including Ephrem Solomon, Acaye Kerunen, Osborne Macharia, Robel Temesgen and Kirubel Melke. She is currently Associate Curator, Black Atlantic at Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge and is a PhD candidate in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London.
She is a recipient of the Literature Matters Award 2023 from the Royal Society of Literature and is part of the Emerging Curators Group 2024 (British Art Network and Tate).