Kenyan visual artist and photographer Thandiwe Muriu’s subjects are bold African women adorned in colourful kanga and ankara fabrics that extend into the background to form a patterned rhythm.
They wear expressive African hairstyles and recycled glasses made from ordinary items such as beads, tambourines, Tarebin bottles, and salad tongs.
Her works explore themes of identity, culture, female empowerment, and self-perception. She uses African proverbs to describe her art, which revives oral traditions and merges them with contemporary compositions.
A self-taught photographer since the age of 14, her first series, Camo (short for camouflage), shows her models as part of the canvas while also existing outside of it.
The Camo series has since been published as a monograph.
In a 2022 interview with Vogue magazine, Thandiwe opened up about how the series was her way of affirming her identity.
“At its core, Camo is a celebration of this beauty and a reflection of my experience being a young African woman in a changing cultural landscape. In my images, the fabric acts as the backdrop on which I celebrate my culture. Through this series, I wanted to affirm everything I had struggled with in my own personal beauty journey—my hair, my face and my identity as a modern woman in a traditional culture,” she told Vogue.
From March 20 to April 19, 2025, she was among the 40 artists featured in FEMMES!, a group exhibition curated by Pharrell Williams and held at Perrotin Gallery in Paris.
In June 2025, Thandiwe and South Sudanese artist Atong Atem had an epic simultaneous outdoor projection of their works on the Old Mutual Building in Nairobi and the RSL Block in Darwin. Titled Double Exposure, the project marked 60 years of Kenyan-Australian relations.
Though most of her works are centred on African fabrics, her experience at the KYOTOGRAPHIE African Artists Residency last year led her to explore Japanese textile craftsmanship. Her Asian and African subjects are dressed in Japanese kimonos set against ankara backgrounds to celebrate the duality of cultures in people of mixed Black and Asian heritage.
As a result, she participated in the Kyotographie International Photography Festival in Kyoto, Japan, in April 2026. She also held two exhibitions: Camo, presented by Longchamp at Kondaya Genbei Chikuin-no-Ma, and 一如 (Ichinyo) at Demachi Masugata Shopping Arcade in Japan.
She has also delved into research on the East African kanga while at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center Residency Program, where she birthed her series Woven Voices, which shows women’s faces at the centre of kangas with inscriptions of African proverbs.
The website details that she has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including a solo exhibition titled Clouds Bring Blessings in France; More Than Meets the Eye, a group exhibition in Switzerland; ARTBO and Bienal Internacional Fotográfica Bogotá in Colombia; and Sisi Ni Hao, a group show at the Goethe-Institut in Nairobi.
The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Centre Residency Program; Colours of Africa in France; The Colours of Dreams in Venice, Italy; a solo exhibition titled I Am Because You Are at New York University; and the 60th Venice Biennale Collateral Event, Passengers in Transit, presented by the Centre for Contemporary Art Lagos.
Other venues include Mexico, the USA, Singapore, England, South Korea, the Netherlands, China, Morocco, and Monaco.
Her works now reside in private and public collections such as the Leridon Collection, the Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection, the Peter & Carla Schulting Collection, the Photo Élysée Museum in Lausanne, and the Hood Museum of Art in New Hampshire, USA. Her works have been commissioned by the United Nations, Apple, Longchamp, and the Swiss Red Cross.