The Follow Fluxus – After Fluxus 2021 grant for young contemporary artists called by the Hessian State Capital of Wiesbaden and the Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden goes in its fourteenth year to Jackie Karuti (*1987, Nairobi, Kenya).

Since 2008 Follow Fluxus – After Fluxus supports international artists whose work suggests ideas inherent to the Fluxus art movement in order to further develop the movement. The endowment of 10,000 Euro is provided annually for a residency in Wiesbaden from June 2021 through August 2021. The work stipend concludes with an exhibition of the artist’s created work in the same year between August 2021 and May 2022.

The jury of five persons consisted of Haegue Yang (artist, Berlin/Seoul, and professor at Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule, Frankfurt), Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (curator, founder and artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, and Curator-at-large for documenta 14), Michael Berger (Collection Berger, Wiesbaden), Monique Behr (Cultural Office Wiesbaden) and Elke Gruhn (chairwoman, artistic director and curator, Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden). Jackie Karuti was nominated by Dirk Snauwaert, director of WIELS – Centre for Contemporary Art, Brussels, for the grant.

The jury chose from 79 nominations and justified the choice as follows:
In the apparent void between silence and action, Jackie Karuti develops multi-layered thinking spaces in which everything is in flux. She leaves it up to us to join the flow and decide where and in what form we travel into our future. Her research-based and at the same time speculative work moves between natural and social sciences and yet goes far beyond them. It opens alternative perspectives and visualizes all those possibilities which can be reached through a free, limitless, radical imagination. In her experimental multimedia artistic practice, ranging from drawing, to film, to performances and installations, she examines the way we perceive and believe to know, taking on complex topics such as identity, sexuality, knowledge production, urban culture, and the local communities.

About the artist /
Jackie Karuti (*1987 Nairobi, Kenya) is a graduate of the Àsìkò International Art School, a nomadic pan-African art school founded by the Nigerian curator Bisi Silva. Her work was exhibited most recently at the Lofoten International Art Festival in Svolvær, Norway (2019), at the 13th Havana Biennial, Cuba (2019), at the Dak'Art Biennial, Senegal (2018) and at the BALTIV Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK (2017). In 2021 she will be participating in the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India.

The grant is made possible by the Cultural Office Wiesbaden.