Kudzanai-Violet Hwami

Last updated

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami (born 1993) is a Zimbabwean painter who lives and works in London, England. Her work explores sexuality, race, and gender. [1] [2]

Contents

Early life

She was born in Gutu, Zimbabwe, where she lived until she was nine. [3] From age nine to seventeen, she lived in South Africa. At age 17, she moved to London, England. [3] [2]

Education

She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in Painting from the Wimbledon College of Arts in London in 2016 and completed her Master of Fine Arts from the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford University in 2021. [4]

Work

Hwami has had several solo and group exhibitions in various cities and galleries across the globe. She held her first solo exhibition at Marylebone’s Tyburn Gallery in London in 2016. Hwami was included in the 2019 Venice Biennale. [5] In 2020, Hwami was included in Apollo magazine's "40 Under 40 Africa". [6] Between 2020-2022, her work was also included in Allied with Power: African & African Diaspora Art, [7] an exhibition at the Peréz Art Museum Miami.

Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Zeitz MOCAA museum, South Africa. [8] Currently, she's represented by Victoria Miro. [9]

In 2022, Hwami shared her process and inspiration for her art in an interview with Amah-Rose Abrams from Wallpaper Magazine:

Her process as an artist is meticulously planned and considered, starting with collaging images and creating the structure of a painting around them. It’s a creative approach she picked up observing and collating images on Tumblr, both creatively and in an effort to get to grips with her identity. ‘I spent a lot of time on the internet as a pre-teen and, in that socially awkward stage of my life, I found it more comfortable to escape and exist in cyberspace,’ she explains. ‘I started exploring sexuality and gender identity. I was obsessed with the idea of physically living in a different body. All my frustration and confusion was expressed through studying the queer body.’ [10]

Solo exhibitions

Hwami has had several solo exhibitions, which include: [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yayoi Kusama</span> Japanese artist and writer (born 1929)

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, and is also active in painting, performance, video art, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop art, and abstract expressionism, and is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and sexual content. She has been acknowledged as one of the most important living artists to come out of Japan, the world's top-selling female artist, and the world's most successful living artist. Her work influenced that of her contemporaries, including Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wangechi Mutu</span> Kenyan sculptor

Wangechi Mutu is a Kenyan-born American visual artist, known primarily for her painting, sculpture, film, and performance work. Born in Kenya, she has lived and established her career in New York City for more than twenty years. Mutu's work has directed the female body as subject through collage painting, immersive installation, and live and video performance while exploring questions of self-image, gender constructs, cultural trauma, and environmental destruction and notions of beauty and power.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ghada Amer</span> Egyptian American artist (born 1963)

Ghada Amer is a contemporary artist, much of her work deals with issues of gender and sexuality. Her most notable body of work involves highly layered embroidered paintings of women's bodies referencing pornographic imagery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thakor Patel</span> Indian artist who worked extensively in Zimbabwe

Thakor Patel is a contemporary artist born in Gujarat, India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jochen Zeitz</span> German businessman

Jochen Zeitz is a businessman serving as the president, CEO and chairman of the board of Harley-Davidson, Inc. He is also CEO and Chairman of LiveWire Inc..Before that, he served as the chairman and CEO of Puma for 18 years. He also served as board member of Kering, the luxury goods company and chaired their Sustainability Committee, for whom he developed its global sustainability strategy. Zeitz is currently a board member of Harley Davidson, The B Team and Cranemere. In addition to this, Zeitz previously served on the board of Wilderness Safaris. Jochen Zeitz is also the co-founder of The B Team with Sir Richard Branson, Zeitz MOCAA and Founder of the Zeitz Foundation to support sustainable solutions that balance conservation, community, culture and commerce, and The Long Run.

Hilton Als is an American writer and theater critic. He is a teaching professor at the University of California, Berkeley, an associate professor of writing at Columbia University and a staff writer and theater critic for The New Yorker magazine. He is a former staff writer for The Village Voice and former editor-at-large at Vibe magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Owanto</span>

Owanto is a British Gabonese artist.

Nandipha Mntambo is a South African artist who has become famous for her sculptures, videos and photographs that focus on human female body and identity by using natural, organic materials. Her art style has been self described as eclectic and androgynous. She is best known for her cowhide sculptures that connects the human form to nature.

Celia Paul is an Indian-born British painter. Paul's mainly known for her impressionistic work, which she developed during her education at the Slade School of Fine Art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maud Sulter</span> Scottish photographer and writer (1960–2008)

Maud Sulter was a Scottish contemporary fine artist, photographer, writer, educator, feminist, cultural historian, and curator of Ghanaian heritage. She began her career as a writer and poet, becoming a visual artist not long afterwards. By the end of 1985 she had shown her artwork in three exhibitions and her first collection of poetry had been published. Sulter was known for her collaborations with other Black feminist scholars and activists, capturing the lives of Black people in Europe. She was a champion of the African-American sculptor Edmonia Lewis, and was fascinated by the Haitian-born French performer Jeanne Duval.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Koyo Kouoh</span> Cameroonian art curator

Koyo Kouoh is Cameroonian-born curator who has been serving as Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town since 2019. In 2015, the New York Times called her "one of Africa’s pre-eminent art curators and managers", and from 2014 to 2022, she was annually named one of the 100 most influential people in the contemporary art world by ArtReview.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Njideka Akunyili Crosby</span> Visual artist

Njideka Akunyili Crosby is a Nigerian-born visual artist working in Los Angeles, California. Through her art Akunyili Crosby "negotiates the cultural terrain between her adopted home in America and her native Nigeria, creating collage and photo transfer-based paintings that expose the challenges of occupying these two worlds". In 2017, Akunyili Crosby was awarded the prestigious Genius Grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

iQhiya is a network of young black women artists based in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa. They specialise in a broad range of artistic disciplines including performance art, video, photography, sculpture and other mediums.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kudzanai Chiurai</span> Zimbabwean art and activist (born 1981)

Kudzanai Chiurai is a Zimbabwean artist and activist. His repertoire of art combines the use of mixed media which involves the use of paintings, drawings, videos and photographs to address and tackle social, political and cultural issues in Zimbabwe.

Mouna Karray is a Tunisian photographer and video artist. Born in Sfax, Tunisia in 1970, she is primarily known for her photography and film. Her art explores socio-political themes in relation to identity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa</span> Art museum, design/textile museum, historic site in Cape Town, South Africa

Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa is a public non-profit museum in Cape Town, South Africa. Zeitz MOCAA opened on September 22, 2017 as the largest museum of contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora. The museum is located in the Silo District at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town. A retail and hospitality property, the Waterfront receives around 24 million local and international visitors per year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sethembile Msezane</span>

Sethembile Msezane is a South African visual artist, public speaker and performer who is known for her work within fine arts. Msezane uses her interdisciplinary practice which combines photography, film, sculpture, and drawing to explore issues focused on spirituality, politics and African knowledge systems. Part of her works focus has been on the process of myth-making and its influence on constructing history as well the absence of the black female body in both narrative and physical spaces of historical commemoration. Msezanes work is held in galleries in South Africa as well as internationally and has won awards and nominations. Msezane is a member of the iQhiya Collective, a network of black women artists originating from Cape Town, Johannesburg and across South Africa.

Lungiswa Gqunta is a South African sculptor and visual artist. Her work has been shown in several galleries and exhibitions including Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Kunsthal Zurich and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, University of Cape Town.

Flora Yukhnovich is a British painter. Yukhnovich is known for her contemporary interpretation of the Rococo painting style. The artist discussed her interest in the concept of taste and how personal objects and patterns can reveal aspects of one's interior self in a 2020 interview with DATEAGLE ART. She also mentioned the idea that people may try to cultivate certain tastes in order to fit in or impress others, and that some tastes may be hidden due to shame. The artist finds the Rococo movement particularly interesting in this regard.

Thania Petersen is a multi-disciplinary artist. Her work is in the collections of notable museums and galleries including the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art and the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa.

References

  1. ↑ Magazine, Wallpaper* (9 December 2020). "Kudzanai-Violet Hwami's modern-pop portraits frame gender, sexuality and race". Wallpaper*.
  2. 1 2 "Kudzanai-Violet Hwami | Apollo 40 Under 40 Africa | In Focus". Apollo Magazine. 28 September 2020.
  3. 1 2 Draper, Jessica. "Kudzanai-Violet Hwami - interview: 'How I identify isn't what pushes me to create. I create because I cannot do anything else'". www.studiointernational.com.
  4. ↑ "http://www.tyburngallery.com/artist/kudzanai-violet-hwami/" . Retrieved 2023-05-20.{{cite web}}: External link in |title= (help)
  5. ↑ Russeth, Andrew (19 February 2019). "Zimbabwe Taps Four for 2019 Venice Biennale Pavilion". ARTnews.com.
  6. ↑ "Kudzanai-Violet Hwami | Apollo 40 Under 40 Africa | In Focus". Apollo Magazine. 28 September 2020. Retrieved 19 December 2021.
  7. ↑ "Allied with Power: African & African Diaspora Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection • Pérez Art Museum Miami". Pérez Art Museum Miami. Retrieved 2023-05-20.
  8. ↑ "Kudzanai-Violet Hwami". Zeitz MOCAA.
  9. ↑ Westall, Mark (2020-12-09). "Victoria Miro has announced the representation of Kudzanai-Violet Hwami". FAD Magazine. Retrieved 2023-05-20.
  10. ↑ Photography, Amah-Rose Abrams last updated Contributions from Catherine Hyland- (2020-12-19). "Kudzanai-Violet Hwami's modern-pop portraits frame gender, sexuality and race". wallpaper.com. Retrieved 2023-05-20.
  11. ↑ "Kudzanai-Violet Hwami". Victoria Miro. Retrieved 2023-05-20.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.