ArtempireMJ holds art and the human together. From inside. Daily.
For anyone who has been noticing things alone.
The artist at 11pm building a practice with fewer resources than the work deserves. The first-time collector who isn't sure if they paid too much. The art finance professional priced out of the institutional reports. The diaspora reader connecting back through art experiences. The story-carrier whose tattoo or skin marking deserves witnessing.
Where they live is not the point. What they carry is.
{/* --- Who this lands for --- */}- · Readers who want what's actually happening on the floor
- · Buyers choosing for meaning, looking for the work that holds up
- · Artists and writers building a practice and want company in it
- · Travelers planning around the art, the gallery, the fair
- · Story-carriers whose skin, city, or career a piece of art names
- · Collectors looking for a portrait that holds a face the long way
Art is not separate from how people live.
It is in the spaces they inhabit — the mural on the building they pass every morning, the painting on the café wall they've eaten beneath for years without knowing the artist's name. It is on the skin they carry — the tattoo that holds a migration story, a grief, a ceremony. It is in the cities they move through — the gallery that opened in a neighbourhood changing faster than its residents can afford, the biennale that landed in a city that didn't have one until someone built it.
It is in the money — what art costs to make, what it sells for, who captures the value, who never sees it. It is in the mind — the question art asks that won't resolve, that stays with you on the commute.
ArtempireMJ maps all of it. From inside the African art world. Addressed globally to anyone who is also paying attention.
Morris Javan Andanje. Artist & editor.
Morris Javan Andanje is an artist and the founding editor of ArtempireMJ. He works in graphite on paper — three portrait series held under the Studio & Gallery practice, alongside original work shown and sold. He writes daily on art and the human, the way money, place, mind and skin pass through art and through each other.
Trained in analytical chemistry before turning to a practice that asks the same kind of questions. Based in Nairobi. Travels for the fairs that matter. Publishes across Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, and a weekly newsletter. Commissions open by WhatsApp.
{/* Money Stories — co-authored. Kathleen's own practice leads. */}
Three years at Centonomy running programs that teach Kenyans how money actually works. Before that, KEMRI, climate consulting, health systems, women's economic empowerment across five countries. A decade of sitting with people and the stories money leaves on them.
Money Stories is hers and Morris Javan's — chapters she writes inside Art + Finance, with a graphite portrait from Morris Javan on each. Equal credit, equal hand on the work. The series opens with her own portrait.
Her practice → kathleenmureithi.com · @kathleenmureithi
Khethiwe Tracy Gumede — Global Art Correspondent, based in South Africa. Press-accredited at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair. Field photography and gallery reporting from across the continent.
Open to working with artists, writers, photographers, and editors. Lagos, Accra, Dakar, London — wherever the work asks for it.
We don't tell people
art is valuable.
We align with what they value.
A read worth your morning.
Art + Finance every week — the work, the money, and how value moves. Inside it, Money Stories: chapter-length writing by Kathleen Mureithi with a portrait by Morris Javan. Plus artists, intersections, mind, and the world read through art.
The shows worth crossing a city for.
Every fair, biennale, open call, exhibition, deadline — verified daily. Built so the door isn't already closed by the time you find it.
The studio practice.
Morris Javan's portrait series in graphite and mixed media — your face, an artist you admire, or the work-meets-money piece. Plus work by other artists shown and sold through the gallery floor.
Be in the room.
Artists submit work for Spotlight features. Writers and researchers join as correspondents. Skin-story carriers submit to the Ink archive.
We show, we don't explain. We align with what readers and artists already value, and we add the work of seeing it together.
Living in Nairobi. Attending the fairs. Drawing the portraits. Reading the room the institutions, galleries, fairs and artists are already shaping — and adding what we see from inside it.
Daily, since 2023. Open to collaborate with the people doing the same work elsewhere.
Khethiwe Tracy Gumede — Global Art Correspondent, South Africa. Press-accredited at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair. Field photography + gallery observations.
Kathleen Mureithi — Money Stories co-author. The human financial reality of creative practice.
Network growing in Lagos, Accra, Dakar, and the London diaspora.
Brush Tu (Nairobi) · Lagos Biennial 2026 · Gallery 1957 (Accra) · The African Arts Trust (Nairobi) · El Anatsui at Tate Modern · Maboneng Precinct (Johannesburg) · Olga Moela (Vanderbijlpark) · RMB Latitudes Art Fair · Everlyn Nicodemus at Goodman Gallery.
Coverage isn't endorsement. Featured artists keep their own contact lines.