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.
Key Exhibitions and Career Highlights
2024: FNB Art Prize winner
2024: Immanentize the Eschaton, First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2023: EXPO Chicago, First Floor Gallery Harare, Chicago, IL, USA
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, China
2021: Premonition of Civil Peace, Selma Feriani Gallery, Tunis, Tunisia
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.
Key Exhibitions and Career Highlights
2024: Messe Messe 2024 (group exhibition), First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2024: Methods of Flight (with Grace Nyahangare), Southern Guild Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
2024: Kuvhunura: The Harare School (Group exhibition), Fondation Blachère, Bonnieux, France
2024: Looking Towards Freedom - Womxn Artists from Africa (Group exhibition), Strauss & Co, London, UK
2024: Freedom in Multitudes (Group exhibition), The 1897, London, UK
2024: FNB Art Joburg, First Floor Gallery Harare, Johannesburg, South Africa
2024: In the Blood (Group exhibition), Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK
2023: FNB Art Joburg, First Floor Gallery Harare, Johannesburg, South Africa
2023: Rudo Rwunouya Nemabasa with Tashinga Majiri, First Floor Gallery Harare, 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.
Key Exhibitions and Career Highlights
2025: Ibwe Rakaraswa ne Muvaki, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe
2024: Mbare Opera, Southern Guild Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
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: FNB Art Prize winner
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
Shamilla Aasha
Born 1977 Hwange, Zimbabwe
Lives and works in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
Shamilla Aasha is a practicing artist and teacher of art and design. After many years of working in painting and mixed media, in 2018 Aasha re-engage with her love of textiles through exploration of her multi-cultural background as a Shona and Indian woman living in Matabeleland region of Zimbabwe. Developing complex works addressing issues related to merging cultures and traditional practices and how they influence identity, spirituality and social status for herself and other women in her community.
Aasha’s works defy attempts at categorisation, incorporating weaving, tapestry as well as engaging with the idea and history of painting. They emerge as soft sculptures, wall-hangings made from found objects as well abstract embroideries. She describes them as sacred objects, a fitting metaphor for her narratives. This metaphor is further expanded on, as she uses sewing patterns, fabric and stitching. This process allows her to create new patterns from the old and with each layer creating a palmistry language.
Shamilla has participated in numerous exhibitions locally regionally and internationally. She is currently part of an ongoing, regional collaborative project, which is interrogating the participation of women in land redistribution in Southern Africa.
In addition to artistic practice, Shamilla also continues to nurture creativity minds through her trust-Asha Children’s Trust, an organisation devoted to creating safe spaces for young creatives grow and thrive outside the formal education sector.
Key Exhibitions and Career Highlights
2024: Messe Messe 2024 (group exhibition), First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2024: To Those Who Came Before Me, First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2024: RMB Latitudes Art Fair, First Floor Gallery Harare, Johannesburg, South Africa
2023: Artissima, First Floor Gallery Harare, Turin, Italy
2023: Messe Messe (Group Exhibition), First Floor Gallery Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
2023: Tomorrows/Today (solo), Investec Cape Town Art Fair, First Floor Gallery Harare, Cape Town, South Africa
2022: Artissima, First Floor Gallery Harare, Turin, Italy
Helen Teede
Born in 1989, Harare, Zimbabwe
Lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe
Teede's recent move to the UK has re-articulated ongoing questions around belonging and accountability. Being Zimbabwean, she is keenly aware of the fraught historical connection between the two countries. Her work addresses decoloniality and ecology, using her physical context as a catalyst for bridging epistemic divides. Paint is a living medium and partner in this process, and she regards her paintings as active interlocutors. Drawaing from personal experiences as well as philosophical and poetic works,she delves into the mythologies and taboos that influence the ways we live in the wold, taking inspiration from the queer and unruly beings that huant society and remind it of its fragility. Her recent painting present such beings in a process of becoming that is both abject and hopeful.
Key Exhibitions and Career Highlights
2025: Taona, S& Projects, First Floor Gallery Harare, New York City, USA
2024: Messe Messe 2024 (group exhibition), First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2024: Kuvhunura: The Harare School (Group exhibition), Fondation Blachère, Bonnieux, France
2024: Looking Towards Freedom - Womxn Artists from Africa (Group exhibition), Strauss & Co, London, UK
2024: Tracey Emin Artist Residency Group exhibition, Margate, UK
2024: MIART, First Floor Gallery Harare, Milan, Italy
2024: Landscape (group exhibition), Alice Folker Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark
2024: Solo Section, Investec Cape Town Art Fair, First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, 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’.
Key Exhibitions and Career Highlights
2024: Messe Messe 2024 (group exhibition), First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2024: Methods of Flight (with Amanda Mushate), Southern Guild Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
2024: Kuvhunura: The Harare School (Group exhibition), Fondation Blachère, Bonnieux, France
2024: FNB Art Joburg, First Floor Gallery Harare, Johannesburg, South Africa
2024: RMB Latitudes Art Fair, First Floor Gallery Harare, Johannesburg, South Africa
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
Again Chokuwamba
Born 2000 in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe.
The youngest artist in the First Floor Gallery Harare roster, Chokuwamba joined the gallery after graduating from the gallery residency programme, after finishing his studies with the National Gallery of Zimbabwe Visual Art Studio. After a number of local group exhibitions in Harare, his solo project at First Floor Gallery Harare immediately attracted attention of international collectors as well as recognition, winning the Best Emerging Artist prize at the Zimbabwe Visual Art Awards 2023.
Selected Exhibitions
2024: Messe Messe 2024 (group exhibition), First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2024: Kuvhunura: The Harare School (Group exhibition), Fondation Blachère, Bonnieux, France
2024: FNB Art Joburg, First Floor Gallery Harare, Johannesburg, South Africa
2024: Drowning in my Senses, solo exhibition, First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2023: Messe Messe (group Exhibition), First Floor Gallery Victoria Falls, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
Victor Nyakauru
Born 1977 in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Victor Nyakauru is one of Zimbabwes most skilled found object sculptors, excavating unique narrative properties of discarded and unused materials to evoke the poetry of lived lives and transmutated traditions of contemporary urban Zimbabweans.
“My style has a limitless range and evocative use of materials that transform seemingly unrelated materials into a work of art.
This allows me to juxtapose materials such as stone, metal, wood, bone, plastic, leather and any other found objects to form part of a body of art,” explains Nyakuru. Using the traditional tsumo (proverbs) and folklore as a touch stone for reflecting on life and evoking conversation with his audiences, Nyakauru gets close to his materials and his people. Rather than making didactic and dogmatic pronouncements with his work, he connects familiar aesthetic and visual signals with his reflections in a way that creates seamless catalysts for communication.
In addition to his art practice, Nyakuru has spent many years teaching at the National Gallery Visual Art Studio in Harare and has mentored numerous internationally successful emerging artists. He has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Zimbabwe, South Korea and China, both and is currently representing Zimbabwe in its National Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale.
Key Exhibitions and Career Highlights
2024: Zimbabwe National Pavilion 60th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
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