By Ogova Ondego
Published March 20, 2021
Though regarded as one of Kenya’s most renowned artists and mother of women’s art in the East African country, Rosemary Namuli Karuga (June 19, 1928 – February 9, 2021) was little known in this former British colony.
I first heard of and met Karuga through Hawafrica Artists (AKA Hawa Women Artists) around 2002 or 2003. Then, the group was organising two art exhibitions in honour of Karuga. The first show was to be a lifetime achievement exhibition in honour of the collagist while the second would be used as a platform on which to sensitise art lovers and members of the public on the hardships of aging in a non-welfare state like Kenya. Through the two events, it was hoped, funds would be raised to assist the artist who, despite her failing senses of hearing and seeing due to the onset of high blood pressure, was still creating her eye-arresting collages from newspaper, magazine and packaging material of bathing soap, tea leaves and flour from her humble abode in Kahawa West on the outskirts of Nairobi.
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Karuga then relocated to Cork, the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland, where she lived with her daughter till February 9, 2021 when she took her last breathe.
Born of a Ugandan father and a Kenyan mother in Mutindwa near Meru town in eastern Kenya in 1928, Rosemary Namuli Karuga relocated with her mother to Nairobi where she attended St Theresa’s primary school in Eastleigh. It was while here that an Irish nun recognised her talent in art and recommended that she pursue it as a career. It was on this basis that young Rosemary Namuli Karuga became the first female student at East Africa‘s first Fine Art School for Africans at Makerere in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, in 1950.
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Here, Karuga is said to have studied design, painting and sculpture for three years that prepared her for her career as a teacher of art.
Upon graduation, writes Mbuthia Maina in Thelathini: 30 Faces of Contemporary Art in Kenya, Karuga tried her hand at commercial art in Uganda before returning to Kenya and dedicating her time to full time teaching career.
Rosemary Namuli Karuga, whose full story is yet to be told as what is available is sketchy, would trace her feet back to the career path the Irish nuns at St Teresa’s school had recommended and for which she had trained at Makerere – art – when she retired from teaching in 1986.
Thanks to Elimo Njau, a fellow Makerere alumnus, Karuga was in 1987 offered an Artist-in-Residence opportunity at the Paa ya Paa Arts Centre in Nairobi where she honed her skills.
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Within no time she had found her bearings and the visual arts sector started according her her due recognition, complete with news media covering Karuga’s work. An example was when she was commissioned to illustrate The Palm Wine Drinkard, a book by Nigeria’s Amos Tutuola that had been published in the famous Heinemann Publishers’ African Writers Series. The collage illustrations of the book gained popularity and were exhibited in Paris (France), London (United Kingdom) and in the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (USA).
Contemporary African Artists: Changing Tradition, the Studio Museum group exhibition that took place in 1992 and featured the work of nine top artists of African origin, provided the breakthrough for Karuga whose tools of trade, Redhill Art Gallery says, were ‘coloured paper scraps from newspapers, glossy magazines, to packaging material, scissors and glue’. She was the only female artist whose art was featured on the show.
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“Rosemary Karuga’s artistic expression is very personal and has a unique technique,” Redhill Art Gallery in whose stock is Karuga’s work, says. “Inspired by Byzantine mosaics, she creates colourful paper collages of people, animals and landscapes of intense strength. Her work reflects her direct environment in figurative representational art.”
“A vast chapter of the still mostly untold story of women’s art in Kenya starts with Rosemary Namuli Karuga,” Anne Mwiti of Kenyatta University in Kiambu County on the northern outskirts of Nairobi, writes in an article titled ‘The Importance of Remembering Kenyan Artist Rosemary Karuga’ that is published by
theconversation.com.
Though “less known than other pioneering women artists of Kenyan origin such as Magdalene Odundo, the celebrated ceramicist and academic – and a former student of Karuga’s – and Wangechi Mutu, the award-winning Kenyan-American artist working across painting, sculpture, film and performance,” Mwiti argues that “Karuga deserves equal recognition” as “art practices evolved around her work and scholarly works have been inspired and influenced by her practice,” Mwiti writes in her tribute.
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Coming hot on the heels of the two art shows organised by Hawa Artists in Nairobi in honour of Karuiga, African Voice newspaper of Ireland conferred on Karuga a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. This is an accolade that is is presented Africans in Ireland for their achievements and contributions to Irish society.
National Museums of Kenya, in whose permanent collections is Karuga’s art, honoured her in 2017 by featuring her as the first artist in its newly-introduced Artist in Focus Project, a monthly series of exhibitions aimed at promoting and marketing art and artists.
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“Each month, on a dedicated display board we shall feature one artist from the National Museums of Kenya permanent art collection at Nairobi National Museum,” NMK told lolakenyascreen.org of Nairobi.” We are starting with the work of Rosemary Namuli Karuga, a renowned sculptor and collagist.”
Come 2018, NMK once more honoured Karuga by including her work alongside that of Theresa Musoke, Nani Croze, Tony Waite, Geraldine Robarts, Robin Anderson, Magdalene Odundo, Joy Adamson and Margaret Trowell in its Pioneer Women of the Arts show that ran at its Nairobi Gallery September 9 – December 8.
Rosemary Namuli Karuga may have gone, but her work survives in the collections of Redhill Art Gallery, National Museums of Kenya, Kenya National Archives, Murumbi Trust’s African Heritage, Watatu Foundation, and many private collections in Kenya and around the world.
