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Keya Tama

@keyatama

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South African artist based in New York
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So happy to see @sag.nyc recently featured in @nytimes It was a pleasure working with @icyandsot, brothers and multidisciplinary artists from Iran, to create the dog logo for the bottle. Rooted in the history of aragh sagi, SAG brings Iran’s once underground raisin spirit into a new chapter in New York. 📸 @jkhoroshilov taken in New York, New York by @keyatama
14
4 months ago
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A mural painted in st Helena bay in an abandoned cray fish factory near my grans house. taken in St. Helena Baai by @keyatama
110
3 years ago
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As promised, the pro reel from the KEYA TAMA: Tied by Time Exhibit that happened last Friday at The Tampa Edition, Curated By AADMIXX. This reel was created by @kylelanceobrien and his talented team @motionminds - Tampa Bay. We... us... YOU ALL, did it again. You came out in masses in the name of art. This time we were graced by the internationally renowned talents of Cape Town artist - @keyatama - and l think it’s safe to say the Bay Area was into his vibe. So much so that we sold out the entire show of 19 original pieces (6 paintings and 13 tapestries). Congrats to all those who got one before they were gone and a massive THANK YOU to EVERYONE who showed up to support yet another beautiful evening on the rooftop of The Tampa Edition. Big ups to Director of Culture & Entertainment, Ryan Brown, and his incredible staff, mad respect to the Hilary Live crew for always providing the perfect soundtrack for the night, so much love to my wife and our team at AADMIXX, (s/o Bucky and Paul) and as always a HUGE thank you to Mikey Lambert and his all star squad at Form 43 for the production assist. These one night exhibits take a village to produce and none of them would be possible without the many months of planning and cohesive teamwork that goes in. My gratitude is immeasurable. Finally, Keya Tama... what can I say other than thank you, thank you, THANK YOU so much for trusting us to host you. Having you here was an honor and we’re already looking forward to your return. Much love and safe travels to you on your next incredible journey. Till next time friend, in the mixx... taken in The Tampa EDITION by @keyatama
25
6 months ago
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Titled “treasure” painted for @jidar_streetart in Rabat, Morocco At the top of the mural, “معرفة الناس كنز” translates to “Knowing people is a treasure.” This idea runs through the whole composition, animals, vessels, plants and repeated forms move together like parts of one living system. The work draws on the atmosphere of Rabat, linking the city to its surrounding ecologies, trade histories and symbolic life. The animals native to the region place, while ceramics and teapots speak to ancient traditions of craftsmanship, hospitality and trade. Plants carry another layer of meaning and symbolize love, continuity and collective belonging, symbolising a vision of community as something organic and interconnected. The mural’s structure is deeply informed by Moroccan tiles and decorative patterning. Through repetition, geometric balance and rhythm, the mural reinterprets ornamental traditions without quoting them literally. Pattern here becomes both structure and metaphor. Thank you to @lboulevard_festival and @salaalouli for making this possible 9 Avenue Al Mohit Al Hadi, résidence La Garde Royale, Yaacoub El Mansour, Rabat taken in Rabat - Capital Maroc by @keyatama
24
10 days ago
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The Jaunt (@thejaunt) is proud to release our long awaited print with Keya Tama (@keyatama). Out now! Last December Keya took a road trip along the Garden Route in South Africa, an epic journey along the southern coast lines starting in Cape Town. Alongside his close friends Seth Pimentel (@african_ginger) and Johnny Allison (@johnny1allison) joined him for the trip. Creative forces united on the road. Aside from the print release, we are preparing for an exhibition that brings together all three artists and their inspiration. The exhibition is opening in December in Cape Town. More news soon. A little word from Keya: “My artwork was inspired by the quiet force of the land and by the way rural space can make time, memory, and atmosphere feel more present. As we drove through seemingly endless mountains, hills, valleys, and lakes, I was struck by the subtle emotions of the landscape and by the way one environment blended into the next. In these spaces, the sky, moon, sun, and stars felt less like background and more like active presences within the land, giving it a sense of stillness, scale, and quiet intensity.“ For now head on over to our website to read more and order the new Keya Tama print: www.thejaunt.net #thejaunt #keyatama taken in Garden Route, South Africa by @keyatama
17
16 days ago
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Titled “we are us together” painted in Stuttgart Arkansas for Arkanvas curated by @justkidsofficial for @ozartnwa with @unexpectedfs It was special to be along painting along side @ninachanel @steveespopowers @camillewalala @lakwena @dabsmyla @annevieux @robertmontgomeryghost @poni @alexis_diaz and @mantrarea The wall measures the entire block and measures 149 feet long by 40 feet high. It took thirteen days to complete and would not have been possible without the @maverickmura @bobby_lee_jones_jr @blahemian @artbyjessicajones and @tigersasha Thank you so much or your help taken in Stuttgart, Arkansas by @keyatama
39
23 days ago
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“the snake with a human heart” Painted by @normalisnormal @paint8 and @keyatama for @nuevomural and for the Kichwa Tunibamba community of Bellavista, in the Cotacachi canton, Sierra northern Ecuador. The saying “AMARU RANU SHANKU” translates to the snake with a human heart in the in local Kichwa dialect. Even those who seem dangerous or untrustworthy may have human emotions and needs. The Kichwa people of Ecuador, also known as Quichua or Quechua, are one of the largest Indigenous groups in the country. They are part of the broader Quechua speaking population spread across the Andes, from Colombia to Argentina, but the Kichwa in Ecuador have developed their own distinct cultural, linguistic, and social identity over centuries. They primarily inhabit the Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands, each region offering unique lifestyles, traditions, and ways of living in harmony with nature. taken in Equador by @keyatama
22
a month ago
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Titled “Under the sun” Painted by @seeyouthroughit @thelostobject @kevincincotta and @keyatama for @woodenwallsproject in Asbury park, New Jersey special thank you to @_juicyjenn for making this project possible. It was also special for us to paint this mural next to @ellenalourens and @ann.lew.is taken in Asbury Park, New Jersey by @keyatama
69
a month ago
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“Every time a door closes, a bigger door opens.” Painted in Civita Campomarano, Molise, Italy for @cvtastreetfest Written in the local dialect, the phrase frames an ending as a new start. a small tribute to memories held within the village. The vases and teapots reference local traditions of craft and pottery. Their fragility adds to their meaning, the culture and collective knowledge of the town get passed down through hand crafted rituals. At the centre, a couple embraces between two doors. Around them, variations of the same figures suggest the idea of love an ancient gesture repeated across different lives. The recurring grandmothers, blowing kisses and knocking on doors, turn affection into a kind of inheritance, a love letter to the small gestures carrying knowledge forward. taken in Civita Campomarano, Molise, Italy by @keyatama
26
2 months ago
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“Shadow Boxing” Painted on an abandoned building in Bellavista, within the Kichwa Tunibamba community of Cotacachi, northern Ecuador, for @nuevomural. Boxeo de sombras translates to shadow boxing, exploring the idea of fighting an opponent who is physically absent. The mural uses this action as a metaphor for the shadow self, the parts of ourselves we resist, conceal or inherit. Beside them, a vase holds another image, a person looking back at their own reflection. The vessel can be read as both mirror and urn, something made to contain, preserve, and eventually outlive us. It becomes a quiet counterpoint to the violence of the boxers. capturing movement beside memory. The abandoned architecture became part of the work. The traces of previous lives turn the building into an invisible landscape of memory. Every empty window holds echoes of past observations. All our ghosts know our distance. What has been left behind is not necessarily gone. Like the shadow self, the past can remain echoing into present precisely because it has gone unvisited. The work was painted within the Kichwa Tunibamba community, part of the wider Kichwa-speaking world of the Ecuadorian Andes. Rather than attempting to illustrate or define that culture, the mural responds to the specific place in which it exists. a landscape where memory, ancestry, and contemporary life continuously overlap. Boxeo de Sombras is ultimately about confrontation with an invisible enemy, the conflict in the strange labor of meeting what the portrait concealed, of entering the abandoned rooms within ourselves, and discovering that some of our oldest opponents have always carried. taken in Equador by @keyatama
5
2 months ago
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“The Hand Remembers” Painted inside of an abandoned fish canning factory in St Helena Bay. The work considers the small gestures and eccentricities that pass quietly between generations as embodied memories. The way a hand rests, moves or comforts can carry something older than language. The hands are drawn with a delicate organic restraint and are set against the rigid geometry of the factory. Their softness creates a formal tension with the architecture, existing as a gesture against structure. Pastel greens give the figures the quality of a faded ornament, in aims to reflect the past and its ancient echoes. The building itself is slowly being taken by the Atlantic. What the sea keeps, the hand remembers. As it erodes, individual bricks are reclaimed, chiseled clean by hand and used again in nearby buildings. The ruin therefore becomes less an ending than a material archive. its fragments entering new structures while its history survives through people, stories and gesture. taken in St. Helena Baai by @keyatama
57
2 months ago
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Time Before Painted within the ruins of a former fish canning factory in St Helena Bay, Before Time inhabits a coastline whose history is inseparable from fishing labour, and the cold Benguela waters that sustained both. The factory once transformed the abundance of the sea into industry but now the ocean is slowly transforming the factory back into landscape. The mural depicts a simple, abstracted flowers. They symbolise evidence of continuance of life entering through the fracture or the future rehearsing itself inside an abandoned system. There are still echoes of the time and memories of the factory, while today surrounding community continues to give the ruins a social life. Abandonment, in this sense, is incomplete. The building has lost its original function, but not its meaning. It remains a public archive half architecture, nature. The title Time Before refers to the strange temporal condition of the site. Past and present occupy the same walls. taken in St. Helena Baai by @keyatama
20
2 months ago
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