collectionsrdm Born in 1980 in Nairobi, Peterson Kamwathi is part of a generation of young East African artists whose break with the colonial tutelage that for decades defined the region’s art has afforded the exploration of topics both deeply rooted in Africa’s cultural background and engaged with global contemporary issues.

Peterson’s highly codified, symbolic, conceptual works, whose content and concepts go far beyond local relevance, distance themselves from the usual patterns of reception of figurative art from Kenya. Rendered in thick layers of charcoal, pastel, watercolor, stencils and more recently collage.

Peterson’s group of works Sitting Allowance, which propelled him to national and international attention in 2007, was arguably the strongest and most visible artistic engagement with the deep crisis that Kenyan society experienced during the violence that exploded in the country after the general election of 2007-08, which left over 1000 people dead and to this day over 300,000 internally displaced people. It is an enigmatic, challenging and powerful comment on the political and social constitution not only of Kenya but the rest of the continent, an indictment on the institutions most closely associated with common electoral failures and corrupt political processes.