SANATORIUM presents Agnes Waruguru’s first solo exhibition in Turkey titled “It Sounds Like Rain is Coming” from April 8 to May 16, 2026. The show brings together works on fabric and paper alongside a site-specific sound installation exploring the rhythms of rain, memory, and the emotional landscapes of lived experiences. The exhibition focuses on water as a unifying force, drawing an abstract line between Nairobi and Istanbul through Waruguru’s recurring motifs, where rain emerges as a potent signifier, simultaneously giving life and erasing it, nurturing and dismantling.
The exhibition continues Waruguru’s research on identity, gender, and relational ecosystems, blending the personal and universal through metaphorical and allegorical strategies. Her works trace connections between the organic and industrial, the visible and invisible, and the temporal cycles of nature and human life. Through fabric, weaving, and mixed media on paper, Waruguru transforms traditional materials into carriers of memory, ritual, and collective knowledge. Each piece embodies gestures passed through generations, where domestic and familial practices become amplified into symbolic worlds.
At SANATORIUM, the artist creates an immersive environment where the visitor engages actively with space, movement, and perception. The sound installation, produced in collaboration with RUMINA and composed of field recordings, creates an immersive sonic environment that functions as both a physical and poetic phenomenon, reverberating throughout the exhibition and immersing the works on fabric and paper within a sensory, contemplative space. The show invites viewers to inhabit a world in which the rhythms of nature, the echoes of childhood, and the traces of ecological life converge.
Agnes Waruguru’s practice reflects a philosophy of post-medium exploration, where painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, and indigenous techniques coexist seamlessly. By placing her works in dialogue with space and sound, she invites visitors into an ecosystem of reflection, memory, and multisensory engagement.
About the artist:
Agnes Waruguru (Born 1994, Nairobi Kenya) is a multidisciplinary artist working across textile, drawing, printmaking, ceramics, needlework, natural pigment making and installation. Waruguru’s work is often connected to their lived experience, reflecting on human interaction with the earth, connecting this with the inner self. Touching on themes of time, traditional cultural practices, memory, invented memory, grief, spirituality and elemental sensibilities.
Waruguru received a B.F.A. in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design, in 2017. She has participated in residencies at Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, ArtSpace Sydney, Saba Artists Residency in Lamu, VideoBrasil Biennial Artists Residency in Boicucanga, Brazil. Waruguru participated in the inaugural edition of the Stellenbosch Triennale, South Africa, 2020. She has been nominated for the Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst Prijs 2022, at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam. She Participated in the 22nd Edition of the Videobrasil Biennial in São Paulo and the 60th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, Foreigners Everywhere.
Waruguru lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya.