Artist Database

Michael Musyoka, a graduate of the Buruburu Institute of Fine Art in Nairobi, began his artistic career as a sign writer and mural and backdrop painter for school productions in Kenya’s national music and drama festivals. His art practice has developed through experimentation with various techniques and stylistic approaches, including painting, collage and illustration.

Musyoka’s compositional style borrows from street art and matatu graffiti in Nairobi, local signwriting styles and graphic novels. The urban landscape of Nairobi, particularly public spaces, and interactions between people within these spaces are the focus in Musyoka’s work. Legal, religious and moral constraints to individual agency are of particular interest, as is the relationship between public officials and members of the public. Depicting exchanges, transactions and everyday compromises made in order to survive as we move through the world, Musyoka’s artwork offers an apt, if suspicious, look at the construction of society in present-day Nairobi.

He has participated in several group exhibitions in Nairobi, as well as shows internationally. Musyoka is a founding member of the Brush Tu Artist Collective based in Buruburu, Nairobi.

Biography courtesy of Circle Art Gallery