Jonathan Gathaara Sölanke Fraser (Kenyan, b. 1995)
Lives and works in Nairobi
Jonathan Gathaara Sölanke Fraser uses drawing as a means to engage with the world around him through a varied approach that includes observational sketching, plant pressing, digital image collection and writing. This multifarious interaction with his environment strives towards a more internal and intuitive “knowing”: one born less of experience and learning, and more of dreaming.
Fraser’s energetic and enigmatic drawings seek to complicate meaning and create new relationships between objects and ideas. Disparate elements in the drawing field are allowed to take up similar qualities in space, eschewing their typical contexts. The drawing field itself is broken down so that a conventional approach to looking and understanding is revised. Fraser invites the viewer to consider the transformations brought by shifts in the conditions of encounter or presentation. This process of de-contextualization is aided by the repetition of certain motifs and objects within and across compositions, extending them through space and time. This reiteration and multiplication emphasizes the contingent nature of meaning and its dependency on spatial and temporal relations.
Fraser studied Fine Art at Kenyatta University. In 2021 his solo exhibition There Is A Time and A Place was held at Circle Art Gallery. He has shown in numerous group exhibitions in Nairobi including: Fictions, Circle Art Gallery, 2022; I Will See What I Want to See, Circle Art Gallery, 2019; If Not Now, Cave Bureau, 2018; Line: The Basic Element, One Off Contemporary Art Gallery, 2018; Stranger Times, Circle Art Gallery, 2017; Anatomy of Me, The Art Space, 2017. Jonathan is currently in residency at 32 Degree East in Uganda till December 2023.
More information about Jonathan Frasers practise can be found on
jonathan-fraser.com