Sophie Kihara-Murer

My work explores how expanded painting can act as a site of Black reclamation. Through the layering of found and reclaimed material, hessian, crochet, yarn, postcards and paint. I build textured surfaces that speak to cultural survival and belonging. Each painting carries traces of diasporic memory, reflecting the instability and transformation of identity. 

Language weaves through these surfaces incorporating slurs, Swahili words, and fragments of text become material forms, reclaiming words once used to wound and transforming them into marks of resilience. My practice operates within expanded painting, abstraction and repair, drawing from both African textile histories and Western art traditions. These works are acts of becoming the processes of piecing together what was lost, misnamed, or silenced. They are offerings of reclamation, a visual language for diasporic presence and Black excellence.