The 193 Gallery is presenting a new series of portraits of women by Kenyan photographer Thandiwe Muriu, in which bodies and fabrics merge in an ode to color and geometric landscapes.
Faithful to Thandiwe Muriu, whose work it has already shown twice, the 193 Gallery is unveiling a new series of photographs by the Kenyan artist, confirming the intensity of a body of work recognized over the past five years, notably at the Musée de l’Homme in the recent Wax exhibition (which highlighted the history of this vividly colored fabric across the African continent). Here, Thandiwe Muriu offers around ten portraits of women whose eyes are always obscured by objects, a seashell, a brush, a comb, a clothespin, a cake mold…whose geometric shapes appear as expressive as a gaze.
The power of these portraits lies first in the contrast between frontality and concealment, representation and camouflage, truth and illusion: these women look at us, yet we cannot discern what is hidden within them, what they are saying, other than that they subvert the codes of femininity and of the photographic portrait itself.
