Chelenge Van Rampelberg

Chelenge Van Rampelberg (born 1961) is a Kenyan sculptor who works with wood. She has been called Kenya's first female sculptor. She also has produced oil paintings.

Early life and education Van Rampeberg was raised in the rural community of Kericho in the Rift Valley. She was exposed to wood and cutting wood from an early age, due to the necessity of gathering firewood from the forests near her home.

She did not receive a formal arts education until the early 1990s, when she attended a two-week workshop at Alliance Francaise about etching and woodcut printing. Her oil paintings are primarily narrative, drawing on stories and images from her childhood. and she also had a solo exhibition in the One Off gallery at Rosslyn, near Nairobi. Several of her sculptures were bought that year by the Sankara Hotel at Westlands. The exhibition was also shown in London at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2021. In 2022, the exhibition moved to Nairobi under the name "Mwili, Akili na Roho", and was expanded with works by three additional artists. In 2024, a retrospective of Van Rampelberg's work was held at the Nairobi Contemporary Arts Institute. The couple had three children.

Van Rampelberg's studio is in Tuala, Ongata Rongai, close to the southern part of Nairobi National Park.