Suburban
FIVE Zimbabwean artists’ work is presently being exhibited at the Tiwani Contemporary in Lagos Nigeria which opened this month and runs until January next year.
The exhibition opened on November 4, 2022 and will run until January 14, 2023.
“Tiwani Contemporary is very pleased to present the group exhibition, ‘I See You’ featuring new and recent works by artists Virginia Chihota, Gideon Gomo, Masimba Hwati, Gareth Nyandoro and Portia Zvavahera,” Tiwani Contemporary said.?
The five artists who are based in Harare, Addis Ababa Ethiopia and Vienna Austria studied at the National Gallery School of Visual Arts and Design (formerly B.A.T. Visual Arts School), National Gallery of Zimbabwe during the 1990s in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Chihota, Zvavahera, Hwati and Nyandoro received international attention with their participation in Pavillion of Zimbabwe’s 2013 and 2015 editions for La Biennale di Venezia , under the artistic direction of Raphael Chikukwa, now the Executive Director at National Gallery of Zimbabwe.
The artists remain close and actively maintain their international careers and profiles based in Harare, Addis Ababa and Vienna. Spanning painting, sculpture, performance and drawing, the exhibition captures the ways in which each artist internalises and responds to the notion of environment.
Prior to the exhibition, Zvavahera and Gomo were artists in residence at Guest Artist Space Foundation, Lagos a subsidiary of the Yinka Shonibare Foundation.
Here, the two artists will research adire, tie-and-dying techniques, printmaking and sculpture and assemblages made from local materials respectively.
Connecting Harare to Lagos, the exhibition presents a unique consideration of intercontinental exchange and friendship through reflections that manifest materially featuring sonic, sculptural and two-dimensional works. As an expression of friendships cultivated over two decades between these artists, “I See You” is a marker of time, community, and a significant moment in the careers of these artists.
Together, the works present metaphysical attributes of this contemporary moment; physical environments and places become entangled with spiritual energies through conceptualizations of her home country. As interplays of screen-printed, flat forms, painterly markings and negative space, each work draws the viewer into Chihota’s dynamic patchworks of stenciled forms, broad strokes and radiant colors.
Founded in London in 2011 by Maria Varnava, Tiwani Contemporary exhibits and represents international contemporary artists.
In 2021, the gallery celebrated its 10th anniversary. In February 2022, the gallery opened its second space in Lagos, Nigeria. — Tiwani Contemporary/Suburban Reporter
