Troy Makaza
Born in 1995, Harare, Zimbabwe
Lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe
Having specialized in painting in art school but always interested in form and texture, Makaza decided to develop his own hybrid medium which would enable him to unite his artistic goals. After experimenting with various materials, Makaza arrived at silicone a material which can be cast, painted with as well as woven and tied. Over the past eight years Makaza’s works progressively developed as an opportunity to speak both viscerally and philosophically to the issues Makaza finds compelling as a young Zimbabwean concerned with politics, history and power and their impact on daily lives of ordinary people as well as a globally engaged millennial. Resonating with traditional modes like weaving and tapestry but unequivocally contemporary, Makaza’s works articulate the conversation of what African and uniquely Zimbabwean contemporary can be – a paradigm internationally engaging and locally compelling. Makaza’s works has received early critical and collector acclaim, taking part in the 2018 survey of Zimbabwean contemporary art at Zeitz MoCAA, winning the Tomorrows/Today prize at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair in 2019, joining important institutional collections like that of Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden in Marrakech, Rollins College museum collection and noted private collections like Jorge Perez personal collection in Miami.
Selected Exhibitions
2024: Venice Biennale, Zimbabwe National Pavilion, Venice, Italy
2023: Artissima, First Floor Gallery Harare, Turin, Italy
2023: Untwisting the Fantasy, Galerie Poggi, Paris, France
2023: ARCOmadrid, Galerie Poggi, IFEMA Feria de Madrid, Spain
2023: The Armory Show, Javis Center, New York, USA
2023: La Première Pierre, Galerie Poggi, Paris, France
2022: Kufa izuva rimwe, First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2022: Instinct of great survivors, Primo Marella Gallery, Lugano, Switzerland
2021: Dispatches from Zambesia, Art Basel Miami Beach, Nova, First Floor Gallery Harare, Miami, USA
2019: Tomorrows/Today (art fair prize winner) Cape Town Art Fair, First Floor Gallery Harare, Cape Town, South Africa
Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude
Born in 1988 in Harare, Zimbabwe
Lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe
Born and raised in Mbare, Harare and Zimbabwe’s most vibrant and notorious ghetto, Nyaude works against the sweeping identity, which has been defined for Zimbabweans by the voice of the state and domestic and international media. His images oscillated between figuration, abstraction and hallucination, drawing from the restless energy of his neighbourhood and its youth, in a country, where more than 70% of the population is under the age of 30. Living on the edge between survival and chaos has been a call to poetry, swinging between brutal and sentimental but almost invariably cynical and satirical. His gesturally rendered effigies of traditional proverbs and poignant vernacular idioms, defy characterisation other than the bursting drive to attain human dignity and quality of life that frequently appears beyond the reach of dreams. Nyaude’s work has achieved wide international critical and collector recognition, in 2018 he presented a major body of work in the USA as part of Songs for Sabotage at the New Museum Triennial. Nyaude’s workis in the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Museum of Contemporary African Art Al Maaden (Macaal), Rubell Family Collection, Jorge Perez personal collection and numerous notable private collections.
Recent exhibitions
2022: Ziva Munhu Wako, First Floor Gallery Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
2022: Negotiating Chaos: It’s the way it shatters that matters (Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude and Pebofatso Mokoena), Simone Subal Gallery, New York City, NY, USA
2022: The Joys of Self-Delusion, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai
2021: Premonition of Civil Peace, Selma Feriani Gallery, Tunis
2021: Grey Spaces, First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2020: True Optimism (solo), Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai, China
2019: Poetry of Rebels, Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude/Song Yuanuyan, Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai, China
2019: Day and Night (Gresham Tapiwa Nyude and Wycliffe Mundopa), GNYP Gallery, Berlin
2019: Night and Day (Gresham Tapiwa Nyude and Wycliffe Mundopa), First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare
Amanda Shingirayi Mushate
Born in 1995, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
Lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe
At just twenty-eight, Mushate is establishing herself as a leading voice in contemporary Zimbabwean painting and an innovative young abstractionist with a growing international reputation. As a young woman and a new mother, in a male dominated field Mushate is also a role model and an advocate for women artists, making art and careers possible without sacrificing family. After completing her studies at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe Visual Arts Studio in 2016, Mushate was mentored by Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude to develop a vibrant and unique personal vision and modes of expression, presenting her first solo exhibition in 2018 with First Floor Gallery. Like any young person, Mushate is preoccupied with finding and shaping her place and path in this world, while negotiating the complexity of interpersonal relationships. Drawing her inspiration from music and from people around her but not wanting to be constrained by over figuration, she paints and sculpts her happiness and burdens, and the things that she takes time to visualize. “Art is a way for me to write about a ‘future’ for me and for all individuals for them to never be overshadowed by negative influences that divert us to our true purpose in life.” Mushate’s passionate, playful and mazelike canvases have been winning critical and international collector attention globally with works in important private collections in Cape Town, New York, Harare, London, Amsterdam and Paris.
Selected Exhibitions
2023: FNB Art Joburg, First Floor Gallery Harare, Johannesburg, South Africa
2023: Rudo Rwunouya Nemabasa with Tashinga Majiri, First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2023: Latitudes Art Fair, First Floor Gallery Harare, Johannesburg, South Africa
2023: Art Dubai, First Floor Gallery Harare, Dubai, UAE
2022: Paris Internationale, First Floor Gallery Harare, Paris, France
2022: SCENORAMA (Gabi Ngcobo curator), Javett Art Centre - University of Pretoria, South Africa
2022: Shuviro Yamai, solo exhibition, First Floor Gallery Victoria Falls, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
2021: Investec Cape Town Art Fair, First Floor Gallery Harare, Cape Town, South Africa
2021: Nguve ine Muridzi, solo exhibition, First Floor Gallery, Harare, Zimbabwe
Wycliffe Mundopa
Born 1987 in Rusape, Zimbabwe.
Lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe
Wycliffe Mundopa is Zimbabwe’s leading painter and a passionate advocate for the lives of society’s most vulnerable, whose needs and dreams are often swept under the carpet by the powers that be. The pathos and pageantry of his works, also becomes an opportunity to see how painfully and vibrantly women’s lives reflect the conflicts of tradition and change of life in contemporary life in Zimbabwe. And avid student of the history of painting, Mundopa makes an urgent case for importance of presenting life of his country and his contemporaries with the same pathos and grandeur as the Dutch masters like Rubens and Rembrandt while situating himself as an heir to the grand tradition, Europeans jealously protect. For him, the drama of the lives of the ordinary people of Harare is of truly historic significance and should be honoured as such. More than that at a time when there is a renewed drive for exoticisation and selfexoticisation in African art, Wycliffe Mundopa pushes back with harsh honesty and brutal beauty of his figures.
Mundopa’s talent has attracted both critical attention and collector acclaim internationally since his early twenties with works in collections as far and wide as Norway, Thailand, Cameroon, USA, Hong Kong, Nigeria, France, Israel Australia, Kenya, Netherlands as well as South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Recent Exhibitions
2023: Frieze London, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
2023: Pachipamwe (We Meet Again), Southern Guild Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2022: Echo curated by Serubiri Moses, Jenkins Johnson Projects, New York, USA
2021: Zva_nyadza: FNB Art Joburg Prize, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2020: 1001 Afternoons, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK
2019: Kubatana – African Contemporary Art Survey, Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Norway
2019: Night & Day – Wycliffe Mundopa/Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude,First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2019: Harare Fauves (Mundopa, Nyaude, Teedе), Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
2018: Defying the narrative, Ever Gold Projects, San Francisco, USA
2017: Another Antipodes/urban axis, PS Art Space, Fremantle, Australia
Pebofatso Mokoena
Born in 1993, Ekurhuleni, South Africa
Lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa
Mokoena holds a BA Honours in Fine Art (with distinction)from Wits University and is completing a Master of Arts in Fine Arts at Witwatersrand University. In 2014, He completed his N.Dip (Visual Art) at the University of Johannesburg and subsequently, apart from working towards his BTech qualification, Pebofatso taught drawing and presentation at the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, at UJ. Emerging from early practice in printmaking, Mokoena’s painting practice is formally underscored by precise mark making and division of space, while exploring ideas around micro and macro scales of politics, architecture and the environment. Pebofatso’s work has received early recognition and support, locally and internationally. Mokoena has held multiple solo exhibitions including; Neoclassical Taste Matrix and Space Dot Conundrums in Harare, Zimbabwe, The Pebofatso Experience at HZRD and Inside Jobs at the Bag Factory as well as curated exhibitions including Diptych; Disclosure at SMAC; Fresh Produce 2014, Inner Nature, Fortunes Remixed, and South African Voices: A New Generation of Printmakers in Washington DC and is in the Springs Art Library Collection, the South African Embassy Art Collection (in Washington, D.C.), and the JP Morgan Global Collection amongst other private collections.
Selected Exhibitions
2023: Space Dot Conundrums, First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2023: Messe Messe (Group Exhibition), First Floor Gallery Victoria Falls, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
2023: Latitudes Art Fair - Johannesburg, South Africa
2022: Negotiating Chaos: It’s the way it shatters that matters (Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude and Pebofatso Mokoena), Simone Subal Gallery, New York City, NY, USA
2021: I Draw Therefore I Think, South South online. First Floor Gallery Harare
2021: Neoclassical Taste Matrix, First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2020: Internal Probes - David Krut Projects, Johannesburg
2020: ARCOLisboa Online, First Floor Gallery Harare, artsy.net
2019: Latitudes Art Fair - Johannesburg, South Africa
Anne Zanele Mutema
Born in 1988, Harare, Zimbabwe
Lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe
Anne Zanele Mutema, a conceptual installation artist who is preoccupied with ideas of space, memory and phenomenology. Having graduated from National Gallery Visual Art Studio in 2010, while concurrently studying cinematography at the Zimbabwe Institute of Photography and Cinematography in 2009, Mutema spent a number of years trying to find a bridge between visual art, material practice and
her interest in time based media. Through experimentation, she arrived at a unique installation approach. Creating immersive installation, she develops a dialogue between the audience and objects, focused on the idea of an Event, defined as a phenomenon located at a single point in time. Searching to create, capture and recreate Events in the context of self, culture and history is a process, project and quest for Mutema. Mutema’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, achieving awards and selected for participation in international festivals. After taking time out to build a family, Mutema, makes an important and ground-breaking return to practice, with “Systemic Necropolis”. Mutema has recently participated in the Toronto Biennale, Joburg Art Fair which has aided her into broadening her research methodology through different encounters of phenomenon.
Selected Exhibitions
2023: Paper Weight (Group Exhibition), First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2023: Soft Equinoctial, First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2022: Artissima, First Floor Gallery Harare, Turin, Italy
2022: FNB Art Joburg, First Floor Gallery Harare, Johannesburg, South Africa
2022: Toronto Biennial of Art, Toronto, Canada
2022: Ranezuro Rangu Ngariziye, First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2021: Vacancy (Zanele Mutema/Miriro Mwandiambira), First Floor Gallery Vic Falls, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
2020: Level | Mosi-oa-tunya, First Floor Gallery Vic Falls, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
Grace Nyahangare
Born 1996 in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Grace Nyahangare is a young painter, who is building up her practice on a foundation of printmaking and photography, which inform both the technical and intellectual elements of her work. Her dreamlike, surreal and dynamically passionate canvases are the result of passing through numerous metamorphoses starting as observations and photographs which are then made into monotypes which then acquire a new environment on canvases in which paint is also transformed through interaction with printers ink to yield a poignancy and otherworldliness. In her early twenties Grace spent three years living and working in the UAE, which has impacted both her aesthetic and ideas about self as a person but also as a woman and now as a young mother. Detachment, reflection and recomposition are synergistic with the ideas that Grace has been working with from the earliest stages of her evolution as an artist, and trying to find whole in a space of cultural and relationship otherness. Grace joined First Floor Gallery Harare in 2023, after completing a three month residency in 2022 she had her first solo in 2023 titled ‘Hatikanganwe Asi Tinopora’.
Selected Exhibitions
2023: Free Spirit (with Mavis Tauzeni and Simhle Plaatjies), Oop Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria
2023: Hatikanganwe Asi Tinopora, First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2023: Investec Cape Town Art Fair, First Floor Gallery Harare, Cape Town, South Africa
2022: Helen Leiros Legacy Exhibition, Nhaka Gallery
2022: Tribute Exhibition, Sky Salanje and the wailers studio Chitungwiza Nhimbe Studio
2021: Chizvinozvino Exhibition Alliance Franchise de Harare
2020: Artists in the stream X, Gallery Delta
2019: State of Mind exhibition, Gallery Delta
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