Michael Musyoka
Foreign Exchange
About the SessionNAIROBI – Following their successful collaboration in 2025, Strauss & Co, Africa’s leading auction house, and Danda Jaroljmek, Director of Art Auction East Africa, will present Art Auction East Africa | Strauss & Co, a 67-lot sale bringing together modern and contemporary art from East Africa and the wider continent. The live-virtual sale will be held at Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi on Wednesday, 28 October, 2026, 7pm EAT. The catalogue spans a diversity of East African countries, including Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda, alongside works by artists from Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Nigeria. Works on paper, photography and sculpture complements the strong painting consignment. “The selection invites collectors to discover East Africa’s diverse modernist histories, particularly those beyond the Anglophone world,” says Susie Goodman. “In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in East African modernists, with artists associated with the Khartoum School shown in museums and fairs globally. Our work as an auction house rooted in Africa is ensuring this rediscovery is not temporary. We are delighted to partner with Danda Jaroljmek in cultivating a sustainable secondary market for East African modernists active during the era of decolonisation and independence.” A preview exhibition will be held at Circle Art Gallery, Victoria Square, Riara Road, Nairobi, during the two weeks preceding the auction on Wednesday, 28 October 2026.
LOT 26
Michael Musyoka
Foreign Exchange
About this Item
signed
Provenance
Private Collection.
Notes
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
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