Contact
Gallery Representation
Paris, France
+33 145 315 416
Commercial Bookings &
Image Licensing Requests
Matt Shonfeld
+44 780 967 8830
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Vanity Fair // Elle France // Vogue // Vogue Italia // Forbes // Apple // BBC // i-D Magazine // The Guardian // El País Semanal // The Guardian 2 // Glamour Magazine SA // France 24- Afrique Hebdo // Le Point Afrique // Adobe Creative Cloud // CNN African Voices // AKAA Journal // UNESCO // Voice of America // Business Daily // Design Indaba // African Digital Arts
Select Public & Private Collections
Collection Gervanne + Matthias Leridon, France
Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Switzerland
UHODA Collection, Belgium
Hood Museum of Art, USA
The Contemporary African Art Collection by Pigozzi, France/ Switzerland
Collection Carla and Pieter Schulting, the Netherlands
Kells Art Collection, Spain
Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, USA
De Rothschild Collection
Eleanor Crook Foundation, USA
Joy Simmons Collection, USA
Biography
Thandiwe Muriu's work takes you on a colourful, reflective journey through her world as a woman living in modern Kenya, as she reinterprets contemporary African portraiture, and presents a bold new vision of a woman and her autonomy. Creating surreal illusions that are not digital manipulations but rather pure photography, she confronts issues surrounding identity and self-perception while seeking to redefine female empowerment through the application of her choice of materials, such as fabric and common household items. Her work is marked by precision and intentionality from the conception of a piece through to its final printed form.
Born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, Thandiwe discovered photography at age 14, experimenting with her fathers old Nikon camera. Self-taught, she immersed herself in books and video tutorials, learning from every resource she could find, as Kenya did not have any formal photography schools. By age 17, she was working professionally, and by 23 had shot her first solo advertising campaign. By 2019, she was photographing campaigns for some of the largest companies in East Africa.
As the sole woman operating in the male-dominated advertising photography industry in Kenya, Thandiwe repeatedly confronted questions around the role of women in society, the place of tradition, and her own self-perception. These experiences inspired her first work, the Camo series, a project of cultural reflection. Camo was the catalyst for her to push new boundaries in her photography, leading her into a deeply personal artistic journey.
Since the start of her artistic career in 2020, Thandiwe’s works have been acquired by numerous public and private collections. She has been commissioned to create works for Apple, the United Nations and Swiss Red Cross among others. Thandiwe opened her first solo-show in Paris in October 2023. This year, she launched her book, Camo, and is showing at the Collateral Event of the Venice Biennale, Passengers In Transit, presented by the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos (CCA Lagos).
She currently resides in Nairobi, Kenya and regularly travels for talks and assignments.
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