BETWEEN SIGNALS EXHIBITION OPENS AT NAIROBI CONTEMPORARY ART INSTITUTE

The Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute (NCAI) in collaboration with the Munyu Collective launched Between Signals, a group exhibition.

Between Signals presents the work of 17 artists who activate the transitional space between analog and digital, immediacy and mediation. The exhibition moves beyond conventional viewing, inviting intuitive and embodied responses to place, memory, and speculative futures through immersive installations that engage light, sound, scent, texture, and time.

Curated by Munyu Collective, the exhibition unfolds as a “field of expanded perception.” It integrates participatory formats including conversation circles, listening sessions, and guided sensory walks alongside archival installations and QR prompts dispersed throughout the gallery. This approach encourages the audience to wander, listen, smell, and feel, positioning their own bodies as systems for receiving and interpreting signals from their environment.

“We invite visitors to encounter sensorial happenings, to engage with art beyond the visual. As you move with these artworks, remember your body is a system with different peripheral devices that pick up signals and transform those into information. This exhibition is an inquiry into what we can learn from paying closer attention.”

The exhibition serves as a platform for exploring the historical and socio-political conditions that shape art spaces and creative communities. The exhibition questions the boundaries between the personal and the institutional, and reflects on resilience within evolving urban spaces.

“Artistic expression is a site where we can rehearse new ways of being,” the curators note. “It is a rehearsal to step away from the ordinary and into liminal zones of sensorial-ability, dreaming, and imagination, foregrounding the architectures of support required for cultural life.”

Featured artists include: Sophia Bauer, Natasha Khanyola, James Kamande, Joy Mala, Ndung’u Mbithi, Muthoni ni Mimi, Anthony Muisyo, Sound of Nairobi, Kamwangi Njue, Cynthia Nyakiro, Awuor Onyango, Kimani Sam K., Kevo Stero, Tizzita Tefera, Wakianda, Adam Yawe and Chela Yego.