Artistic Practice Evolution

A self-taught artist, Kamunde spent 17 years doing portraiture commissions, where she sharpened her technical skills using oils and pastels. Kamunde then transitioned into full-time practice in late 2020.

In 2022, Kamunde completed a three-month residency with Afriart Gallrey’s professional artist development program, Silhouette Projects in Kampala, Uganda. Through structured mentorship and critique sessions, the residency not only allowed her to sharpen her technical painting skills, but also provided the opportunity to develop her practice conceptually. It is during this time that she developed her first body of work, “Rest; Pursuit of Peace”. At the time, her exclusively oil painting practice explored meanings of rest as a direct response to the state of deep fatigue within herself and many of the women within her inner circle. The “Dera”, “Dirac” or “Baahti” (a long, loosely fitting Somali-Yemeni dress) was her chosen motif for this exploration. The dress is designed to fit loosely, giving ample room for aeration and movement. It originated in Yemen, and then through trade routes arrived in Somalia and later the Kenyan coast and travelled further inland. In Nairobi, the Dera has grown in popularity, particularly as loungewear. To her, it serves as a “Do Not Disturb” sign for the women who wear it, signaling “me-time” and the reclamation of their energy.

In 2025, Kamunde extended her subject matter to explore the contradictory, and nuanced experiences of rest vs labour, sensuality vs modesty alongside themes of respectability/presentability through the additional mediums of video, installation, and sound. This formed the basis of her second body of work, “Fabric of Our Being”. Here, she examines the Dera further, exploring it beyond the margins of rest, and approaching it more holistically as a lens into the multi-faceted, complex, sometimes contradictory, and nuanced experiences of black women in the East African region. By speaking to friends, family, and colleagues, as well as referencing newspaper articles and community blog posts as a points of departure, Kamunde found new ways to expound the work. She explores the Dera as a mirror of the contradiction, complexity and versatility of the East African female experience. For example, the Dera is a dress that often signals rest in it’s looseness and comfort, but for Kamunde and the women in her life, it also serves as a ‘uniform’ or ‘working-dress’ of sorts, suitable for house chores and for working from home.