Soaring through the dreamscapes of Christina Kimeze

South London Gallery 

31 January – 11 May 2025

Christina Kimeze’s first institutional solo exhibition in the UK, Christina Kimeze: Between Wood and Wheel at South London Gallery immerses the viewer in a fantastical atmosphere where female figures oscillate between gravity and flight, inner stillness and motion, past memories and the present moment. Exploring the elusive emotional in-between spaces of otherness, identity and belonging, the exhibition also touches on notions of freedom and rebellion.

Kimeze, who studied Biological Sciences at Oxford University before graduating from the Royal Drawing school in 2021, is known for her poetic depictions of solitary female protagonists in lush landscapes and surreal interiors. Inspired by family, friends, dreams, films, and literature, her shadowy figures often appear alongside abstracted architectural forms like circles or arches.

The artist’s latest works, displayed at South London Gallery’s main space and the Fire Station, include colourful paintings, small works on paper, and a woven tapestry. Inspired by the revival of roller skating in Black communities across the UK and US since the Covid-19 pandemic, Kimeze explores its energy, communal spirit, and fluid motion as well as the sport’s associations with freedom, escape and flight. 

The exhibition title, Between Wood and Wheel is taken from Night at the Roller Palace, a 2012 poem by African American poet January Gill O’Neill. It captures a sense of in-betweenness – gliding on wheels yet grounded to the wooden flooring of the rink, moving freely yet maintaining balance – suggesting both liberation and inner control.  Pieces like Get Rollin’ (2024) and Night-skate (2024), part of a gouache series on paper, reference the classic 1970 roller disco film documentary Get Rollin’ and capture the vibrant atmosphere of skaters in colourful 1970s attire gliding around the rink. 

Kimeze’s fascination with these transitional qualities in skating may reflect her own experience of navigating dual cultural identities. Born to a Ugandan father and a British mother, she integrates cultural hybridity in her oeuvre. For example, the matoke tree, with its distinctive curved palm-leaves, frequently appears as a stylised motif in Kimeze’s paintings, symbolising Uganda’s plant life and her memories of visiting her father’s homeland in East Africa. As Kimeze describes in an interview with Alayo Akinkugbe it also alludes to colonial histories, particularly the journeys of the Baganda tribe – her ancestors – who travelled across Africa with Christian missionaries, planting matoke trees along their way. 

Two large-scale painting series titled Soaring and Between Wood and Wheel displayed in the main building expand the theme of skating by  drawing inspiration from folkloric and mystical tales of flying women and are inspired by the book Women who Fly: Goddesses. Witches, Mystics and other Airborne Females written by Serinity Young. 

Soaring III (2025) depicts two figures gliding at speed behind a wall of banana leaves, their focused gazes creating the sense that they are coming out of the painting, rushing towards the viewer. The outstretched arms of the yellow figure in the back, partly buried by stripes of matoke leaves, resemble angel’s wings, amplifying the painting’s magical quality. In the lower right corner, a turquoise figure is abruptly cut off,  momentarily visible before dissolving back into the foliage. Expressive brush strokes in bold colour contrasts of yellow and turquoise heighten the sense of movement and free self-expression. Kimeze’s experimental use of perspective enhances this effect further – for instance, the yellow figure in the background appears to be larger than the one in the foreground.

The artist’s inventiveness is also evident in her painting techniques and choice of materials. By rubbing dry oil pastels and chalk with her hands on wet oil painted surfaces like suede matboard, she creates a tactile softness. 

In the downstairs gallery of the Fire Station, a large-scale tapestry showcases Kimeze’s collaboration with Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh. Rendered in striking contrasts of orange and purple, it depicts the abstracted heads of two figures, standing beneath an arch. This masterfully woven piece, which is based on Kimeze’s painting Blue Doorway (2024), seamlessly translates both the fluidity and expressiveness of her brushstrokes as well as her luminous colour palette into textile form.

To me, Kimeze’s expressive and vibrant paintings call to mind the works of early 20th-century German Expressionists – artists who, with the colonial mindset of their time, were influenced by the abstracted forms of African art. They often depicted nude female figures in the landscape as acts of rebellion and liberation. But whereas their works were shaped by a colonial and patriarchal systems, Kimeze’s depictions of the female body defy the male gaze. Additionally, by asserting narratives of her Ugandan ancestors that have been overlooked in history into her paintings, her work embodies an act of resistance informed by postcolonial thought. 

During this year’s cold and dark February (when suffering with 'fernweh' meaning to yearn for distant places, or the desire to escape one's current surroundings), a walk through Kimeze’s paintings in South London Gallery immediately transports me to the sunlit tropical landscapes of East Africa. At the same time, wandering through the exhibition stirred memories of a different kind of freedom – one closer to home. The memories of the sensation of gliding on roller skates, with its fleeting sense of weightlessness all returned to me. As I write this dispatch on one of the first sunny days this year, I feel compelled to lace up my inline skates and spin through the local park. For me, Between Wood and Wheel is a reminder that freedom isn’t always found in distant places – it can also be rediscovered in art, or on roller skates. Freedom can be found within our own bodies and the spaces we move through every day.

Christine Takengny, The Roden Senior Curator

Christina Kimeze: Between Wood and Wheel

South London Gallery
65–67 Peckham Road
London
SE5 8UH