Murae is a UK-based South African fine art photographer working with camera-less photographic processes. Using chemigrams, photograms, and chemilumens, she embraces the dialogue between intention and unpredictability, allowing images to emerge through the interaction of light, chemistry and material.
Texture is the foundation of her practice. Through layered surfaces, chemical reactions and physical interventions, she uses texture as a visual language to explore memory, loss, resilience and transformation. Richly tactile surfaces become emotional landscapes, where memory and experience take material form. Rather than seeking to preserve memories, her work reflects their fragile and shifting nature, revealing how they fragment, fade and transform.
Murae’s work is a meditation on impermanence and the quiet transformations that accompany healing. The evolving nature of her process reflects how experiences of pain and loss are carried, transformed and reimagined over time. In embracing uncertainty, she creates work that honours what has been lost while remaining open to what can emerge.
Murae studied Photography at the Durban University of Technology in South Africa before moving to the UK, where she initially worked in advertising. Returning to her photographic practice, she found herself drawn away from technical precision towards the expressive possibilities of alternative photographic processes, where experimentation and materiality became central to her work.
Through her practice, Murae invites viewers into moments of quiet reflection and emotional connection, where tactile surfaces create a bridge between what we see and what we feel. Her work explores how experiences of pain, loss and transformation can take material form, creating a space where difficult emotions can be witnessed, held and transformed.