Daily Inspiration: Meet Keya Tama

Today we’d like to introduce you to Keya Tama.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I started painting murals around the world when I was thirteen, my parents met as teenagers painting trains. I was immersed in graffiti, Streetart and skate culture from a young age. At nineteen years old I moved to Los Angeles where I began to evolve my style and paint with color and started to paint lager and lager murals. Around this time I also started assisting Shepard fairly with had a big impact on my work ethic and perspective on art, I also was surrounded by artists I grew up inspired by so this too gave me a great push. After 2020 I moved to New York where I am based to this day.

I grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, surrounded by art from a very young age. My parents met as teenagers painting graffiti on trains, so I was immersed in graffiti, street art, and skate culture long before I understood that being an artist was something I could pursue as a career. I began painting murals at thirteen, and what started as an extension of the culture I grew up in quickly became a way of traveling, meeting people, and experiencing the world.

At nineteen, I moved to Los Angeles, which marked an important turning point in my artistic development. I began experimenting more with color, refining my visual language, and taking on increasingly large scale murals. During this time, I also started assisting Shepard Fairey, an experience that had a lasting influence on my work ethic and understanding of what it takes to sustain a career as an artist. Being surrounded by artists whose work I had admired growing up was both surreal and incredibly motivating.

After 2020, I moved to New York, where I am still based today. Over the years, my practice has expanded beyond murals into painting, ceramics, and tapestries. Although the mediums have changed, I have become increasingly interested in how a simple image can communicate something complex. My work has gradually evolved into a visual language I think of as Ancient Contemporary Minimalism, drawing inspiration from ancient symbolism, architecture, memory, and the shared experiences that connect people across cultures.

Growing up in South Africa and spending much of my life painting in different countries has shaped the way I understand art. I’ve always been fascinated by the things that remain recognizable across different places and times: the gestures, objects, stories, and symbols that seem to belong to everyone. I often think of my work as an attempt to find a common language through images.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I think one of the greatest challenges of being an artist, especially in the beginning, is having a vision that you can see clearly but that doesn’t yet exist for anyone else. There is a strange kind of loneliness in believing in something you haven’t quite figured out how to make real. The patience, determination, and uncertainty involved in building that world from the ground up have been both my greatest struggle and, ultimately, one of my greatest achievements.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I went through a long period of experimentation and reinvention. I was constantly pulling my work apart and putting it back together, searching for the right balance of color, composition, symbolism, and simplicity. There were moments when I felt I was getting closer, only to realize that something fundamental was still missing. I think one of the hardest things is knowing when to keep searching and when to trust what you’ve found.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am a South African artist based in New York City, specializing in large-scale murals, painting, ceramics, and tapestries. I began painting murals at thirteen, and over the years, I have developed a distinctive visual language that blends ancient and contemporary imagery into abstracted modern folktales. My work explores the space between the surreal and the personal, using familiar objects, symbols, and figures to tell stories about memory, love, transformation, and our shared human experience.

My style has been described as Ancient Contemporary Minimalism. I work with geometric compositions, restrained color palettes, and simplified illustrative figures, often reducing imagery to its most essential forms. I am particularly interested in how much emotion and meaning can be communicated through very little. My murals begin with a hand-drawn grid, a slow and deliberate process that allows me to build compositions in direct conversation with the architecture around them.

I think what sets my work apart is the attempt to create a visual language that feels both ancient and contemporary, something that can exist across cultures without relying on a specific language or context. I draw inspiration from art history, mythology, everyday objects, and the people and places I encounter. I’m fascinated by how certain symbols and gestures seem to repeat throughout human history, and how something as simple as two people embracing or a hand holding a flower can carry an entire narrative.

What I’m most proud of is having developed a recognizable visual language that is entirely my own, while allowing it to continue evolving across different mediums. I’m also incredibly grateful that my work has taken me around the world, allowing me to paint in places I might otherwise never have visited and connect with people whose lives are very different from my own. Some of my most meaningful experiences have come from creating work in unfamiliar environments and discovering how much we have in common.

How do you think about happiness?
Synchronicities and the invisible world of ephemeral beauty make me happy. The small, fleeting moments that are easy to overlook, the strange coincidences, unspoken connections, and subtle poetry of everyday life. Traveling has always made me more sensitive to these things. Being somewhere unfamiliar forces you to pay closer attention, and suddenly the smallest details of life become extraordinary.

When I first started traveling as a child, I remember feeling that every country had its own dance, its own rhythm, gestures, rituals, and ways of understanding the world. I was fascinated by how differently people could experience the same existence, and I wanted so badly for everyone to be able to witness and appreciate all these other dances. I think that feeling has stayed with me and become a large part of why I make art.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.keyatama.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/