Curated by Alessandro Romanini

Saturday, 24 January 2026
workshop / meeting with young local artists, 4:00 pm
artist talk, in dialogue with the curator Alessandro Romanini, 5:00 pm
opening, 6:00 pm

Press kit: bit.ly/3NiTF43

Casa Masaccio continues its multidisciplinary and multicultural research path, which has led the space to present original events related to different media and to focus attention on non-European artistic developments, presenting for the first time in a public museum a solo exhibition by Kenyan artist Agnes Waruguru.

The exhibition From What We Are by Agnes Waruguru opens on Saturday, 24 January 2026 at Casa Masaccio | Centre for Contemporary Art. Curated by Alessandro Romanini and realized with the support of the Regione Toscana as part of the program Toscanaincontemporanea2025 and in collaboration with VISTAMARE gallery Milano | Pescara.

Agnes Waruguru (b.1994), recently featured in a cycle of major international exhibitions – including participation in the 2024 Venice Biennale curated by Adriano Pedrosa, and shows at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam in the Netherlands, as well as exhibitions in public and private spaces in Los Angeles, Istanbul, Paris, São Paulo, and Hong Kong. The exhibition brings together, in what was once the home of the great Renaissance artist, a selection of recent works by the Kenyan artist that represent the complexity of the expressive dynamics characterizing her practice while integrating with the architecture and rich historical-artistic heritage of the Tuscan exhibition space.

This selection is complemented by a series of ceramic sculptural works, created at the artist’s request in Tuscany, with the aim of engaging materials and production methods typical of the host territory, while also involving local craftsmanship and the genius loci of the area. For Waruguru, techniques and materials play a central role in her creative process and acquire multiple meanings and values connected to identity, memory, and relationships, as emphasized by the exhibition title (From What We Are).

For the opening, visitors will have the opportunity to deepen their understanding of Waruguru’s work through a series of events at Casa Masaccio: starting at 4:00 pm, the artist will engage with young local artists; at 5:00 pm, she will meet the public for an artist talk in dialogue with curator Alessandro Romanini, followed by the exhibition opening at 6:00 pm.

The exhibition path conceived for Casa Masaccio illustrates her post-medium approach, which leads her to work with numerous expressive media. Visitors will therefore encounter works created using techniques ranging from painting, sculpture, drawing, up to installation. The exhibited works, along with the techniques and materials employed – above all cotton – serve both as tools to investigate the dimension of identity and as vehicles to express contents belonging to the personal and biographical sphere.

In the artist’s creative universe, pictorial processes are combined with productive acts that translate a form of know-how learned and inherited from her mother and grandmother the female figures who have been part of her life, becoming symbolic elements of gender dynamics and socio-political balances. Sewing, embroidery, beading, knitting and dyeing, are incorporated into creative processes alongside painting, glass and ceramics, connecting intimately with the sphere of personal identity, creating an inviting intimacy to her work. Referencing its economic, social, and issues related to equal rights and blurring the line between craft and art. Waruguru’s work is not a form of militant claim, but rather an attempt to contribute to awareness, provoke reflection, and involve the observer in a process of thought and meaning-making.

In this context, her works and the exhibition design engage all aspects of the spatial syntax, from volumes to smells, from the visitor’s path to relationships with the outside (the urban environment), involving the audience in a total experience that goes beyond simple contemplation. Following a well-defined project that envisages the active involvement of the observer as an integral element in the process of constructing meaning for individual works and for the exhibition as a whole, Agnes Waruguru creates works that function as dispotifs, in the Foucauldian sense of the term, mechanisms to encourage the viewer to think about the themes involved in the creative process and behind the surface of the artwork.

Special thanks to Simone Guideri for his collaboration.

Opening hours: Casa Masaccio | Centre for Contemporary Art
Monday: closed
Tuesday – Friday: 3:00–7:00 pm
Saturday, Sunday, and public holidays: 10:00 am–1:00 pm; 3:00–7:00 pm
Free admission

Free guided tours
every Saturday at 5:30 pm
reservation recommended
+39 055 9126168 | +39 055 9126283 | casamasaccio@comunesgv.it

Casa Masaccio | Centre for Contemporary Art
Corso Italia, 83 – 52027 San Giovanni Valdarno (AR)
Tel. +39 055 9126283 – casamasaccio@comunesgv.it