Jordan Rita Seruya Awori (JRSA, b.1988) is a Kenyan interdisciplinary artist based in Frankfurt, Germany. Working across collage, installation, video, sound, and performance, she explores and questions the layered complexities of human experience through processes that shift between intuition and structure, research and ritual. Often using materials such as water, hair, thread, soil, and paper — elements she believes hold stories, absorb touch, and resist control — she creates works that balance control and chaos, the personal and collective, stillness and movement. While her diasporic perspective informs how she sees, it does not confine her stories; instead, she builds ambiguous, layered spaces where multiple truths can coexist.

A graduate in Arts and Design from the University of Nairobi, JRSA’s background in interior design shapes her approach to space, making the environment an active part of her work. Her works have recently been shown at Museum Giersch der Goethe Universität and the Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum Frankfurt, and her practice has been written about in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Kunstforum International, and Berlin Art Link.

  • My practice is rooted in layering as a way of thinking, remembering, and being in the world. I’m drawn to how things overlap, blur, and refuse to stay separate: the personal and the political, the fragile and the grounded, the remembered and the forgotten. I move between collage, installation, video, sound, and performance, following intuition more than certainty. Water is a recurring collaborator; it stains, distorts, and transforms the surface, teaching me to surrender control. As someone who tends to hold on tightly, I find this both difficult and freeing. The work often asks me to let go before I am ready, to trust that something meaningful can emerge from what I cannot control. That tension, between perfection and release, has become central to how I work and live.

    Much of my imagery begins from fragments: family archives, textures from home, gestures of care. It also comes from moments of frustration, from trying to make sense of a world that often feels illogical or absurd. I’m interested in how the smallest details, a strand of hair, a cracked wall, a faded print, can hold entire histories.

    I want my works to resist stillness. Even when fixed on paper or screen, I’m drawn to the feeling that something is shifting, peeling, or growing beyond its edge. I often use three-dimensional layering, textured surfaces, and visual mobility to suggest that movement, as if the work is slowly escaping its own boundaries. This sense of motion reflects how I see the world: nothing ever fully contained, everything in the process of becoming. Space itself becomes a participant, shaping how each layer breathes and interacts.

    Since moving from Nairobi to Frankfurt, my palette and rhythm have shifted. I’ve found a quiet in the muted tones of European winters, a different kind of warmth that lives in texture, patience, and slow transformation. My practice now leans toward the organic and the evolving, drawn to moments where things change form yet continue to carry traces of what they were.

    I’m drawn to the in-between: between stillness and motion, beauty and awkwardness, knowing and unknowing. My work lives there, in the tension that holds everything together. I think of it as building an altar, slowly and intuitively. Each layer carries something: a sound, a scar, a root, a thought. Together, they form a space where viewers are not asked to understand, but simply to be with what rises, and in that space, to question what they see, feel, and have been taught to know.

  • 2025:

    Solo:

    • Ethionya - Frankfurt, Moya Frankfurt (24.09.2025 - currently)

    • Wafuranki: The Findings of Seruya (Part 1) - Frankfurt, Basis e.V. Projektraum (03 - 06.07.2025)

    Group:

    • Fixing Futures - Frankfurt, Museum Giersch der Goethe Universität (05.05 - 31.08.2025)

    • Southern Lights festival - Frankfurt, Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum (01 - 31.03.2025)

    • Postcards From The Edge 2025 (Visual AIDS) – New York, Berry Campbell Gallery

    2024:

    Solo:

    • Chini ya Maji solo exhibition - Frankfurt, Basis e.V. Projektraum (02 - 08.08.2024)

    Group:

    • Code virtual exhibition - The Holy Art Gallery (23.10 - 23.11.2024)

    • Crémant. Cava. Booty Bounce (ccbb) community hangout - Frankfurt, Basis e.V. (21.09.2024) - watu collective

    • Basis Frankfurt Sommerschau art market - Frankfurt, Basis e.V. (07.09 - 10.11.2024)

    • Goddess II’ virtual group exhibition (23.02.24 – 31.03.24)

    • Postcards From The Edge 2024 (Visual AIDS) – New York, Berry Campbell Gallery

    2023:

    Group:

    • Berlin Art Institute Artspring open house exhibition – Berlin, Berlin Art Institute (03 - 04.06)

    • Postcards From The Edge 2023 (Visual AIDS) – New York, Berry Campbell Gallery

    • Action against Hate: Diversity & Religion – London, University Of Westminster

    Solo:

    • The Women of Firsts – Frankfurt, Roseli Cafe And Bar

    • Remembering and shaping democracy (Frankfurt Post Colonial) – Frankfurt, Medico international e.V.

  • 2025:

    Mkokoteni short film:

    • Lift-Off Filmmaker Sessions Volume 3 (23.12.24 - 05.01.2025)

    • BGHRA 2025 Virtual Conference: Art as Resistance (rekinning, reckoning, and justice)

    Mimi, Nywele - Nywele, Mimi short film:

    • Lift-Off Filmmaker Sessions Volume 3 (23.12.24 - 05.01.2025)

    2023:

    The Colonies and the Queen film:

    • BGHRA 2023 Virtual Conference: Art as Resistance (Transcultural Expressions)

    2022:

    Raw short film:

    • BGHRA 2022 Virtual Conference: All Black Lives Matter

    • Boden International Film Festival

    • Berlin Indie Film Festival

    • Venice Intercultural Film Festival

    • Lift-Off Filmmaker Sessions by Lift-Off Global Network

    How Do They See Us short film:

    • 1st Monthly Film Festival - Belgrade

    • Lift-Off Filmmaker Sessions @ PinewoodStudios

    • First-Time Filmmaker Sessions @ Pinewood Studios

    • Moody Crab Film Fest: India

  • 2024:

    • Kufa na Kupona part of the ‘basis Sommerschau’ and ‘Frankfurt Art Experience’ 2024 - Frankfurt, Basis e.V.(07.09.2024)

  • 2025:

    • Lutz, Anja. “On the Edges of Graphic Design from A—Z—∞ A—Z presents Berlin (here)

    • Schößler, Joshua. “Ich will nicht belehren, nur hinterfragen” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 15.08.2025 pp.14

    • Lovric, Adela. ‘Productive Hope: ‘Fixing Futures’ at MGGU’,, Berin Art Link, 23.06.2025 (here)

    • ‘Wie werden die Zukünfte der Erde gestaltet?’, UniReport|Aktuelles aus der Goethe-Universität, No.3, 10.06.2025, pp.3

    • Thiemann, Julia Katharina. ‘Frankfurt am Main Fixing Futures Planetare Zukünfte zwischen Spekulation und Kontrolle’, Kunstforum International, Band 303, 06.2025, pp.254-256

    • Magel, Eva-Maria ‘Mensch und Wurm Vereint’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, No 90, 16.04.2025, pp.12

    • Simon, Hannah. ‘Zwischen Kunst und WissenschaftFrankfurter Rundschau, No.81, 05.04.2025, pp.29

    • ‘Catalogue: Fixing Futures, Planetary Futures between Speculation and Control’, Neofelis, Release date 04.04.2025

    2024:

    • Suboart magazine – issue 22 (April 2024)

  • 2025

    Panel:

    • fps: Futures per Second Image Frequencies of the Imaginable - Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum Frankfurt in collaboration with Museum Giersch of the Goethe University - Zara Zandieh and Jordan R.S. Awori - 06.08.2025

    • Seeing the Unforeseeable: Art, Science, and the Imagining of Futures - Museum Giersch der Goethe-Universität symposium - Dr. Steven Gonzalez and Dr. Julia Schubert (University of Frankfurt) in conversation with Jordan R.S. Awori (artist), Prof. Dr. Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay (University of Oslo), Dr. Manpreet Jattana (Univesity of Frankfurt) and Dr. Joshua Wodak (Western Sydney University). - 14.06.2025

    • BGHRA 2025 Virtual Conference: Art as Resistance (rekinning, reckoning, and justice) - Sophie Holzberger, Jordan R.S. Awori and Siegbert Ozim Ott - 22.02.2025

    Solo:

    • Southern Lights festival - Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt - hosted by Andrea Hartmann - 22.03.2025

    2024

    • Black, trans, queer, liberation rights inside and outside 069 - Bar Central, Frankfurt - Chiara Otto; Leslie López N'sudila; Essi aka E*, & Jordan R.S. Awori - 25.02.2024

    2023

    • BGHRA 2023 Virtual Conference: Art as Resistance (Transcultural Expressions) - Rhea Ramjohn, Goitseone Montsho and Sonya Donaldson (moderator) - 24.02.2023

  • 2025:

    ‘Für Mich’ Workshop (20.05.2025 - 29.07.2025)

    A cooperation between Places To See (part of the Frankfurt Department of Culture) and Museum Giersch der Goethe Universität.

    5 workshops facilitated by JRSA aimed to create a safe and empowering environment in which participants can explore feminist themes, self-expression, and intersectionality through mixed-media collage art.

Contact and Studio:

Info@jordanawori.com

Basis Studios (Gutleutstraße 8-12, 60329 Frankfurt am Main)