Gallery Representation: What Changed in 2025
By Njeri Wachira · 11 August 2026 · 2 min read
One real, verifiable case study in what gallery representation looked like changing in 2025: Circle Art Gallery added a second exhibition space and launched a standing portfolio-review programme for artists.
This isn't a survey of every gallery in the region — that data doesn't exist in one checkable place. It's what actually changed at one gallery this desk could verify in detail: Circle Art Gallery, Nairobi.
The physical change
Circle Art Gallery expanded into a 2,500 square-foot space in 2023. In 2025 it added a second, smaller 54 square-metre gallery specifically so two exhibitions could run at once — a working artist's solo show and a group or emerging-artist presentation, rather than one show at a time filling the calendar. That's a concrete capacity decision, not a rebrand: more artists get wall time in a given year without any of them getting less.
The programme change
Alongside the physical expansion, Circle launched a quarterly Artists Open Week — a standing session where artists can bring work in for portfolio review and career advice, rather than representation decisions happening only through informal introductions. That's a specific, repeatable point of entry into the gallery's world that didn't exist as a formal programme before.
Why this matters beyond one gallery's press page
A second exhibition space and a standing open-submission programme are both ways a gallery can represent more artists, or represent them more often, without diluting its existing roster — which is the actual tension every growing gallery navigates. Whether other Nairobi or regional galleries made comparable moves in 2025 isn't something this desk can verify without the same level of direct documentation Circle has published, so this piece won't claim it as a market-wide trend. What can be said honestly: at least one significant East African gallery visibly built more capacity for artist representation in 2025, on the record.
What an artist should take from this
If you're looking for a way into gallery representation rather than waiting for an introduction, a formal open-submission programme like this is a real, checkable door — worth confirming directly with the gallery whether it's still running and what it currently expects from a portfolio, since programmes like this can change year to year.
— The ArtCollect Desk
Source: Circle Art Gallery's own published exhibition and press pages (circleartagency.com).