Ephemerals: Art exhibition explores life moments through colour, nature and memory

Rasto Cyprian’s solo exhibition, Ephemerals, reflects on the fleeting nature of human experience by exploring emotions, memories, dreams, and everyday observations.

Curated by Danda Jaroljmek, the exhibition opened on June 3 and runs through July 4 at Circle Art Gallery.

Ephemerals came out after he stopped creating to deal with personal issues. After a while, he realised there were artworks he needed to make about what had happened in his life. This exhibition turned it into a journal.

That time away from art made him think about short-lived experiences that influence daily life, such as emotions, weather patterns, political developments, personal disappointments, and unexpected moments of joy. Then he poured them into art-making.

“Making art was the break that I took from personal events in my life. Most of the things I was thinking about were temporary experiences, and I realised that even life is short-term,” he says.

In this exhibition, Rasto examines the fleeting moments that go unnoticed but leave lasting impressions. The works explore emotions such as grief, confusion, anger, excitement, disappointment, and optimism, and the spaces in between. It is also about dreams, self-judgments, and observations.

He explains that the exhibition is about meditating on the ephemeral nature of everything, through which he appreciates how things thrive and decay and how those changes affect people. The exhibition includes two large-scale works, Bliss and Hot Water.

“Bliss captures a sense of calm using only the colour green. It was an easy piece to work on. Everything felt like it was working out, and the mind was quiet. The feeling the painting gave me is why I named it Bliss,” he says.

Hot Water explores moments of pressure and uncertainty. Through a combination of orange, purple, and green, it shows the burden around difficult decisions.

In another piece, Dissolving Dreams, dark purple tones give way for brighter lilac hues to show the changing nature of aspiration. Wilderness imagines rainfall in a dry landscape to represent renewal in a barren environment.

Trees and roots run in every piece of this exhibition to represent life and the human experience. From observations of the natural world, Rasto uses trees to explore visible experiences and their hidden foundations and how internal struggles sometimes are visible despite trying to hide them. Reeds growing near the river where he spent time as a child are also a recurring motif.

“In nature, trees are rooted. People are also rooted in their families and other things that support them. Sometimes the surface can be damaged, like a tree that has been burnt, but the roots remain,” he says.

The exhibition describes fleeting moments as the building blocks of memory that influence reality through colour, texture, and experience.

While everything changes or disappears, he says that there is grace to be found in accepting impermanence and in appreciating the beauty in life's constant cycles of change.

Ephemerals also marks an important milestone in his own development. He describes the exhibition as a threshold, as a culmination of recent experiences and a goal achieved.

Born in Busia and raised in Kibera, Rasto embarked on his artistic journey in 2013 through an arts programme at the Uweza Foundation. Encouraged by the experience, he started painting on canvas and later developed his practice through artist-led spaces in Kibera, including a close mentorship with mixed-media artist Onyis Martin.

His practice is inspired by landscapes, objects, architecture, music, literature, and the changing environments around him. Working in painting, drawing, and material experimentation, he has embraced process-driven approaches that prioritise exploration.