At Palazzo Grassi, the Pinault Collection presents a major exhibition dedicated to the British-Kenyan artist Michael Armitage (born in Kenya in 1984), bringing together more than one hundred and fifty works, including historical pieces and new productions. Armitage’s practice emerges from a continuous friction between different worlds. At its core lies East Africa, and Kenya in particular, examined through a gaze that is both critical and ironic. Oscillating between figuration and abstraction, documentary narrative and dreamlike vision, Armitage interweaves personal memories with references to classical mythology, African literature, and Western art history. The resulting works are vibrant, layered compositions, often large in scale, that confront the sociopolitical tensions of the present without avoiding its most difficult issues: political repression, corruption, violence, migration, inequality, and power dynamics. For Armitage, art is not a refuge but a space for direct engagement with reality.
Curated by Jean-Marie Gallais, with the collaboration of Hans-Ulrich Obrist for the catalogue, Caroline Bourgeois, and Michelle Mlati, the exhibition is conceived as a journey through unstable landscapes in which the narrative is never singular. Historically identifiable scenes, such as the Kenyan elections of 2017 or the lockdowns of 2020-2021, coexist with more elusive visions suspended between reality and dream, inhabited by enigmatic figures and hallucinatory landscapes, leaving viewers to find their own way through overlapping temporal and narrative planes.
A central element of Armitage’s practice is his use of lubugo, a tree bark prepared according to Ugandan and Indonesian traditions, which replaces the conventional Western canvas. Holes, folds, and rough textures guide the painterly gesture, generating dense, stratified surfaces. What emerges is a sensitive and unsettled form of painting, capable of transforming memory, history, and myth into suspended, open-ended images that feel profoundly contemporary.
Featured image:Â Michael Armitage, Dandora (Xala, Musicians), 2022 – detail
Pinault Collection – © Michael Armitage – Ph: © White Cube (David Westwood)
