Luminous Contours
Tinaye Makuyana
Private view:
Thursday, 9th October, 6–9pm
Exhibition dates:
9th October – 18th October, 2025
Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop is thrilled to present “Luminous Contours”, the Solo Residency Exhibition by Tinaye Makuyana, our 24th Solo Resident who has been working in the studio above the gallery space from July-October 2025. Please join us for the Private View on Thursday, 9th October 6-9 pm.
Fragile Reflections
By Stacie McCormick,
Director of Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop
Tinaye Makuyana’s art practice exists in the delicate interstice between materiality and perception, where light, colour, and form converge into ephemeral encounters. At the heart of her work is a meditation on the ungraspable nature of the colour spectrum, an acknowledgment that light resists containment and defies definitive categorisation. Her pieces are not merely visual experiences; they are intimate invitations to pause, to perceive, and to trace the fleeting traces of colour as it moves across surfaces and folds.
Makuyana’s use of folded paper as a sculptural medium underscores this interplay of fragility and reflection. Each fold becomes a vessel, a receptacle that captures glimpses of light in transient arrangements. The material’s inherent vulnerability amplifies the sense of ephemerality, suggesting that colour, like memory or emotion, is always in motion—never fixed, never fully knowable. Her works, in their quiet complexity, evoke a poetics of presence: they do not dictate what to see, but rather guide the viewer toward intimate observation, revealing nuances of tone and shimmer that might otherwise go unnoticed.
The reflective quality of Makuyana’s practice is not merely literal but conceptual. The surfaces of her folded sculptures interact with ambient light, creating shifting reflections that transform with the viewer’s movement and the changing environment. These delicate interactions render colour as both subject and phenomenon, highlighting its fugitive, almost spiritual qualities. Each piece becomes a locus of contemplation, a reminder of the subtle, often overlooked beauty in ephemeral encounters.
In this way, Makuyana’s art transcends conventional materiality. The paper folds, like small gestures of attention, serve as metaphors for the human experience of perception: delicate, mutable, and profoundly intimate. Her works are contemplative mirrors, offering fleeting reflections of the spectral richness of light itself. They encourage a heightened awareness, a gentle acknowledgment that some truths—like the full depth of a colour or the essence of a moment—remain beautifully elusive.
Ultimately, Tinaye Makuyana’s art practice is a quiet celebration of fragility and flux. Through the interplay of reflective light and intimate sculptural gestures, she crafts a visual language that is at once poetic and precise, inviting viewers to linger in the suspended, luminous spaces where colour, light, and paper converge in fragile, fleeting harmony.
About
Tinaye Makuyana (b. 2000, Harare, Zimbabwe) is a paper sculptor based in the United Kingdom. She began creating her signature paper sculptures while pursuing a BFA at Loughborough University. Her sculptures are crafted from 100% long cotton fibre paper, scored and moulded with a stencil knife to create sculptures that are playful, deceptive and curious. Her work is crafted to achieve a visual balance of geometric forms, with careful consideration regarding colour, form, and composition.
Through the process of paper folding, Tinaye explores the interplay of light, shadow, and geometry by replicating the shapes, depth and dimension found in architectural features. Optical illusions created using intense colour challenge audiences to question their surroundings and encourage contemplation about their perceptions of reality.
She received the Right of Discipline grant from the Antipode Foundation, and her sculpture, Lifeline (2024), will be installed and added to Loughborough University’s permanent collection. Has exhibited her work this year at London for a Group Exhibition with Cold Magazine (February 2025), has exhibited in Loughborough, Nottingham and Birmingham in 2024 and was awarded one to watch by Colette Griffin, Regional Director (part-time) of CVAN East Midlands, part of the National Contemporary Visual Arts Network (May 2023).
About Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop and the Workshop Foundation:
Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop is an exhibition and residency space in London and unique in its approach to bringing artists and their practices to the public. They support a diverse range of emerging and mid-career contemporary artists by providing them with space and time to develop their practice, network within our growing community, be mentored by team members and crucially be introduced to their expansive network of collectors, art educators, professionals and visitors.
Through their residency programmes and exhibitions, they give artists, curators and theorists a platform to present work and share ideas as well as creating an environment for freethinking and exchange.
They have now organised more than 40 exhibitions with over 120 artists and curators, with 10 exhibitions and 25 artists in residence a year, drawing in international audiences and participants, as well as being a local landmark in the community of Kensington and Chelsea and its surrounds.
Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop was founded in 2015 by artist Stacie McCormick in a former builder’s merchant.
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