Artist profile · 17 works on the wall

BEN MUNGAI

Ben Mungai paints under the name Studio ArtDid.co. His acrylic and oil work moves between two registers: sharp pop-culture portraiture — Batman, a hollow-eyed antihero lifted from manga, a straw-hatted pirate crossing paths with a kung fu panda — and quieter, more conceptual pieces, like a handful of roses rooted in a hand grenade. A recurring figure, part soldier and part statesman, threads a red beret and a web of starlines across the continent behind him. Lately the palette drops out altogether in a track of black-on-raw-canvas silhouettes — a ronin wading through pampas grass, a footballer frozen mid-volley — brushed more like ink than paint, while pieces like Ngamia 1, a fuel station trading under a sky of candlestick charts, turn the same flat cartoon language into straight commentary. Across every register, Ben works in flat, confident color blocks and hard outlines — more comic panel than classical canvas — immediate up close and considered from across a room.