Thaís Muniz

Thaís Muniz is a Brazilian-Irish visual artist and researcher working across multiple mediums to explore the intersections of inherited and acquired identities, memory, transit, and inward love. Her community-oriented practice unfolds through intimate learning processes, including workshops, performances, installations, sculptures, and film. Her work also spans photography, celebrations, and activations, often incorporating archives, personal memorabilia, and symbology.

Muniz holds an MA in Art and Research Collaboration from the Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Ireland. Her work has been exhibited at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the RHA Gallery, and the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles. Her first solo exhibition, Rites of Care, Curse & Comfort, was presented at the Sirius Arts Centre in Ireland in July 2024. She has participated in residencies at D6 Culture-in-Transit in Newcastle, UK, and Cork Printmakers, IE. Muniz is a recipient of the Arts Council Visual Arts Bursary Awards (2024) and the Arts Council’s Agility Award (2021, 2023).

Since 2012 Thaís Muniz has researched the physical and metaphysical significance of the head (Ori) in Afro-Atlantic societies, focusing on headwrapping as a complex system of communication and symbolism. Muniz coined the term ‘Turbante-se’ (‘Turban Yourself’) to invite others to engage with her research through tactile, accessible, and educational means, both online and offline.

She founded Escuna Sound System (2016), an annual boat celebration that explores Black performance, aesthetics, and the embodied diasporic experience of sound system cultures.

Her ongoing research project, New Atlantic Triangulations, investigates displacement and mental health through embodied mythologies and cosmovisions, shaped by her mixed identity as a Brazilian woman of West and Central African heritage who became an Irish national.