Peterson Kamwathi

Drawing becomes a sustained practice

Peterson Kamwathi was born in Nairobi in 1980. The exhibition archive at Stevenson records his training in animation at Shang Tao Media Arts College and later work in printmaking settings. He also developed a sustained practice of drawing on paper, using repetition to turn separate pieces into a longer investigation.

His comments about paper describe a familiar material that can receive marks directly and accommodate experimentation. That preference helps explain how a body of work can stay open while it is being made. A gesture can be tried in one drawing, repeated in another or combined with a different material.

Sources for this section: [1] · [2] · [5]

Thinking about institutions through figures

Sitting Allowance was shown at the Goethe-Institut in Nairobi in 2009. It responds to the crisis following the 2007 Kenyan election by considering institutions involved in public life. The named works give the series more specificity than a general account of crowds: one recorded sheet is Untitled (The Media).

The grouping of bodies can give a viewer a clue about an institution without identifying named people or recording a particular incident. An account of the election must use other records for those particulars. Kamwathi’s work asks instead what a body looks like when it becomes part of a collective arrangement.

Sources for this section: [3] · [4] · [1]

A group can take over a room

In Monument to a Vessel, hand-drawn figures with placards make a gathering occupy physical space. An interview published in 2026 also records Kamwathi’s interest in the roles people assume in groups. Put beside the drawings, it gives a way to read the queue or gathering as an arrangement of individuals, not simply a background motif.

Sources for this section: [2] · [5]