Dance Of Many Hands, 2017

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami’s couageous and tender paintings reveal a deeply personal vision, exploring themes such as diaspora, displacement and identity, featuring self-portraits and images of her extended family.  For Hwami, powerful nudes raise questions about the black body and its representation, as well as sexuality, gender and spirituality. The artist’s influences include music, such as ZimHeavy & Afrobeats; literature, including the works of Carl Jung; and her own ongoing voyage of self-discovery.

Hwami’s process involves experimenting with photography and digitally collaged images, using these to create large works on paper or canvas with intensely pigmented oil paint, and often incorporating other media and techniques, such as silkscreen, pastel or charcoal.
Hwami was born in Gutu, Zimbabwe in 1993 and lived in South Africa until the age of 17.  She is currently based in the UK and on graduating from Wimbledon College of Arts in 2016, she was awarded the Clyde & Co. Award, the Young Achiever of the Year Award at the Zimbabwean International Women’s Awards and was shortlisted for Bloomberg New Contemporaries. In 2017, her first solo show, If you keep going South, you’ll meet yourself, at Tyburn Gallery was met with wide critical acclaim.

Recent group exhibitions include the 58th Venice Biennale Zimbabwe pavilion (2019). Les Ateliers de Rennes – Biennale d’Art Contemporain, France (2018);  Five Bhobh – Painting at the End of an Era, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa (2018); Vos désirs sont les nôtres, Triangle ...

Goodman Gallery

Goodman Gallery is an international contemporary art gallery with locations in Johannesburg, Cape Town and London. The gallery represents artists whose work confronts entrenched power structures and inspires social change.

Goodman Gallery has held the reputation as a pre-eminent art gallery on the African continent since 1966. It has been pivotal in shaping contemporary South African art, bringing Lisa Brice, David Goldblatt, William Kentridge, David Koloane, Sam Nhlengethwa and Sue Williamson to the world’s attention for the first time during the apartheid era.

Since Liza Essers became owner and director in 2008, the gallery roster has grown by more than 30 international artists, with a focus on women from the African Diaspora and beyond.

Goodman Gallery has a global programme working prominent and emerging international artists whose work engages in a dialogue with African and post-colonial contexts.

Some of these artists include Ghada Amer, El Anatsui, Candice Breitz, Alfredo Jaar, Grada Kilomba, Kapwani Kiwanga, Shirin Neshat, Ernesto Neto, Tabita Rezaire, Yinka Shonibare CBE, Mikhael Subotzky and Hank Willis Thomas.

Critical to this programme has been the introduction of two ongoing curatorial initiatives: “In Context”, which explores tensions of place and belonging; and “South-South”, which considers connections between artists from the “global south”. Goodman Gallery’s expansion to London furthers this mission to confront dominant historical narratives and to contribute to contemporary art discourse and social repair. Read more