Saudade (2025)

Agnes Waruguru’s work is a personal and poetic exploration of memory, belonging, femininity, craft traditions and transience. Her visual language is deeply rooted in process and materiality. She uses everyday materials such as old bedsheets, fishing nets, traditional Kenyan kanga fabrics, dried flowers (hibiscus), saffron, and salt — all infused with personal memories of family rituals.

Water plays a central role: rain, seawater, and evaporation leave visible traces on her textile and paper works. The unpredictable gesture of water allows compositions to emerge organically, in a continuous interplay between control and chance. In Saudade, Waruguru’s monumental textiles reveal a layered landscape of plants and water, in which the material becomes not only a carrier of memory, but also a place for emotion to reside.