A contemporary artist who grew up in Tāmaki Makaurau, Synthia Bahati’s photographic practice is informed by fashion and driven by the community around her. She often collaborates with other local creatives of the African diaspora and draws on her own lived experience of Blackness in Tāmaki Makaurau to create portrait photography that reflects self-determined ideals of beauty and gender.

She has a MFA from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland. In 2022, she exhibited in Between the Gift and its Reprisal at Artspace Aoteaora.