Agnes Waruguru's First Italian Museum Solo Show at Casa Masaccio Explores Global Simultaneity

Agnes Waruguru, born in Nairobi in 1994, presents her first Italian institutional solo exhibition titled 'From What We Are' at Casa Masaccio in San Giovanni Valdarno, Arezzo province. Curated by Alessandro Romanini, the show features works that integrate her personal background in traditionally feminine crafts like embroidery and beadwork with painting and installation. Waruguru's practice draws on a concept of 'simultaneity' inspired by a global postwar tradition of storing sewing materials in Danish butter cookie tins, a phenomenon noted by British journalist Amelia Tait. Her ceramic sculptures reinterpret the African horned cucumber (kiwano) through abstracted forms with handle-like protrusions, crafted by Simone Guideri. The exhibition explores 'disjunctive inclusion' through familiar yet alienating elements, creating rhizomatic, polivalent experiences that blend domestic ritual with universal cultural references from floral patterns to Renaissance colors. Waruguru's work positions artistic making and human relationships on the same ontological plane, developing an immanent structure centered on simultaneity as evolving subjective experiences rather than systemic rules. The title suggests existentialist undertones while maintaining material lightness, embracing the concept of the 'subject in process.'