Maina Boniface Kenya, b. 1987

Maina Boniface was born in 1987 in Nanyuki town, Kenya, and currently lives and works in Nairobi.

Maina is an inquisitive artist who started as a stretcher-bars maker for artists to support his artistic career. His work, since 2009, has been figurative and has evolved in the quest to tackle various themes: has touched on different themes such as social-political satire, music, conflicts in human behavior, and mental health. He is inspired by human reactions and his daily encounters, which he shows with his surrealist figures, and is currently experimenting with a combination of abstract and surrealism. The figures and forms in his work are distorted, sometimes exaggerated to marry the mood that the work exudes. The curiosity to know and try to comprehend how things and people co-exist brings out a path of discussion between the work and the viewer, thus leaving a sense of the undefined and room for further interpretation. Though a reclusive artist, he works predominantly with acrylics, although he is not shy to explore other mediums to tackle themes of interest and techniques.

In recent years, his work has been featured in magazines, art books, and news articles. His work has been exhibited locally and internationally in places such as Nairobi, Lagos, Dubai, Venice, Paris, Hamburg, Jo’burg, and Denmark and is in private and public art collections. In Nairobi, he is a founding partner of BRUSH TU ART STUDIO/ COLLECTIVE.