Born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1985, Portia Zvavahera is emerging as one of the outstanding artists of her generation. She has developed a painting practice that combines a mix of techniques to construct a visually beguiling personal cosmology featuring figures, creatures, shapes and shadows. Working in a studio in her home in Harare, she weaves together dreams, fantasy and stories of herself and her family into densely patterned, intensely coloured paintings.
The exhibition title, Zvakazarurwa, means ‘revelations’ and includes both new and recent paintings that together reveal the depth and richness of Zhavahera’s practice. She creates monumental mindscapes that form ambitious decorative schema of imagined worlds and patterned palimpsests.
While the bulk of the exhibition focuses on the period from 2020 to the present, when the work becomes flatter and more richly patterned, the exhibition draws on her earlier engagement with eros, intimacy and female experience, in a few key works from 2012.
New works have been created especially for the exhibition, and these are shown to build on recent works with shared characteristics, combining paint and print, drawing and painting; using repetition and pattern and involving massed central forms over extended colour fields.
The exhibition is curated by Tamar Garb FBA, Durning Professor in the Department of History of Art at University College London, who is a recognised authority on contemporary art from Africa as well the works of women artists and feminist aesthetics. She has been in dialogue with Portia Zvavahera for over eight years and has developed this exhibition in close collaboration with the artist.
Fruitmarket Director, Fiona Bradley said “We are immensely fortunate to be able to bring this materially extraordinary, conceptually rich work to Scotland. The paintings have an immediate, visceral appeal that stays with you over time, unfurling in your mind’s eye as you take the artist’s singular vision with you out of the gallery and into the world.”
A new publication written by Tamar Garb that extends the reach and scope of the exhibition accompanies it and includes a conversation between Garb, Sinazo Chiya, Tandazani Dhlakama and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela.
There will also be a conversation event ‘Things that have been revealed to me’ held on 1st March from 14.30 to 15.30 that will see Curator Tamar Garb in conversation with Sinazo Chiya and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela on the work of Portia Zvavahera.
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The exhibition Portia Zvavahera: Zvakazarurwa is organised by Fruitmarket in collaboration with Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge and runs from 01st March to 25th May 2025 at Fruitmarket, 45 Market Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1DF.
www.fruitmarket.co.uk
Free. Open daily 11am–6pm
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 