Nedia Were Kenya, 1989

Nedia Were (b. 1989, Eldoret, Kenya) grew up in the lush, tropical western region of Kenya, raised by his grandparents, both educators. His grandfather, an art and craft teacher, came home every evening with school projects and newspapers: watching him sketch the human figure was the artist's first encounter with the body as a subject of art, and the events reported in those papers rooted in him a lasting connection with the life of society. As a teenager he pursued art as a signwriter, developing his own style, and continued as a self-taught painter, feeling the urge to be part of the solution to social and environmental issues and to offer a voice to the disenfranchised: an art conceived to promote internal and external dialogue on society's shortcomings.

Were's mature language was born from an encounter with the work of Kerry James Marshall, whose use of black pigment to represent the human figure shifted his perspective: rather than depicting struggle, he chose to portray his figures in an empowering, positive light. Through experimentation he discovered that black, like every colour, exists in a range of shades, and his subjects are built from that luminous spectrum, a conscious act that amplifies and questions the meaning of Black beauty in the contemporary context. In response to the historical absence of the Black body from Western art history, Were places his figures within natural environments, the floral iconography of his childhood landscape, symbolic spaces of transformation, adaptability, death and rebirth, exploring spirituality, identity and the interconnection between self and nature in a declared poetics of Afro-optimism.

Were has taken part in more than thirty exhibitions across Africa, Europe and North America. After years of group shows and competitions in Nairobi, from the Affordable Art Show at the Nairobi National Museums to the Manjano Art Competition, and the two-person exhibition "Essence of Time" at the Nairobi National Museums of Kenya (2019), his international breakthrough came with the sold-out debut of the "Mumwamu" series in "The Line Between" at Mitochondria Gallery, Houston (2021), followed by the solo exhibitions "Fragments of Perceptions" (Mitochondria Gallery, 2022), "My World/My View" (Ross-Sutton Gallery, London, 2022) and "The Possibilities of Becoming" (Mitochondria Gallery, 2023). In 2023 he made his biennale debut at the XIV Florence Biennale. Museum exhibitions include "4000 Ans d'Art Africain" at the Wall House Museum, Saint-Barthélemy (2022), "Dig Where You Stand" at the Fondation Zinsou, Ouidah (2024), and "We Belong Here: The Gutierrez Collection" at the Cameron Art Museum. His work has been presented at Investec Cape Town Art Fair, AKAA Paris, Miart Milan, FNB Joburg and SCOPE Miami Beach, and his auction record was set at Sotheby's London in 2022 with "Barua Si Yangu" (The Letter Is Not Mine). In 2022 he was named the second most-followed emerging artist on Artsy. His works are held in private and public collections across Africa, Asia, North America and Europe. He lives and works in Nairobi.