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WITH two weeks to go to International Women’s Month, the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (NGZ) has announced the appointment of a curator and two artists to the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale this year.
The one commonality they share is that the three are all female creatives.
Fadzai Muchemwa is the new curator for contemporary art at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, while Portia Zvavahera and Kudzanai Violet Hwami will showcase their work at the main Venice Biennale show, which kicks-off in April (2022).
In announcing Muchemwa’s appointment, the NGZ said the position has been created, “in order to streamline the gallery’s curatorial activities across its three branches and, continuously expanding network.”
Curators are in charge of a collection of exhibits in a museum or art gallery. Their job is to build up collections, often in specialist areas. Their work involves buying exhibits, organising exhibitions, arranging restoration of artefacts, identifying and recording items, organising loans and dealing with enquiries.
Her appointment launches a new chapter in Zimbabwean art sector.
The new curator will have two assistants, one in Bulawayo and the other one in Mutare, effective next month.
Muchemwa is a 2017 fellow of the international training programme at the British Museum. She is a collaborator for Independent Curators International and the Zimbabwe Pavilion at the International Art Exhibition in Venice. She is a founding member of the Practice Theory Collective
She was a researcher with the Arts of Africa and Global Souths programme in the Fine Art Department at Rhodes University, in South Africa.
Previously she served as curator for education and public programming at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe from 2017-2020, and assistant curator from 2016-2017, where she co-curated Moulding a Nation: The History of the Ceramics Collection of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (2018–2019), Dis(colour)ed Margins (2017), Culture in Communities (2016), and Jazzified: Expressions of Protest (2016). In addition, she curated The Unseen: Creatures of Myth and Legend, an exhibition of artworks by Isaac Kalambata at the Lusaka National Museum in 2018.
As visiting curator at the Bag Factory in Johannesburg in 2019, she produced the publication Curating Johannesburg: rest. less, under siege/in transition.
Muchemwa’s appointment comes against the background of two Zimbabwean female artists being named as part of an11–strong African contingent taking part in the main 2022 Venice Biennale, in Italy in April 2022.
Portia Zvavahera and Kudzanai Violet Hwami are part of cast of 213 artists drawn from 58 countries,that is set to participate in the 2022 edition of the main Venice Biennale due to run from April 23 until November 27.
The other African participating artists, apart from Zimbabweans, are drawn from Eritrea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Senegal and South Africa.
The Venice Biennale is the world’s biggest art exhibition — often times referred to as the Olympics of the Arts. One hundred and eighty of the 213 artists due to take part, have never before shown their work at the Venice Biennale.
The biennale is a prestigious event for contemporary artists and has become a constellation of shows, a central exhibition and, national pavilions mounted by individual nations and independent exhibitions throughout Venice.
Muchemwa sees one of her immediate tasks as ensuring finalisation of Zimbabwe’s exhibition at the Venice Biennale, while attending to the 2022 exhibition programme.
Looking ahead, Muchemwa hopes to play a significant role in ensuring the NGZ becomes a “more engaging, inspiring and accessible space, serving the whole community”.
She also looks forward to the NGZ contributing more to scholarships in the arts.
This year marks the 59th Venice Biennale. The advent of Covid-19 resulted in the postponement of the 2020 and 2021 editions.
While Hwami and Zvavahera will be taking part in the main Venice Biennale exhibition, four more artists will be part of the Zimbabwe pavilion at the Venice Biennale. They are Kresiah Mukwazhi, another female artist, Wallen Mapondera, Ronald Muchatuta and Terence Musekiwa.
The main exhibition of the biennale, themed “The Milk of Dreams”, sees 213 artists participating and showcasing 1 433 of their creative works and objects. It is curated by Cecilia Alemani, the director and chief curator of High Line Art, the programme of public art of the urban park located in New York, the US.
Alemani, the first woman to land this post, is a past curator of the Italian pavilion.
Eighty new projects were conceived specifically for the 2022 Venice Biennale.
The main exhibition is a culmination of many conversations held with artists spanning recent years. Emerging from these conversations, were questions that appeared to capture a moment in history when the very survival of the human species is threatened.
Among the emerging questions were: How is the definition of human changing; what constitutes life; what differentiates plant and animal, human and non-human; what are our responses towards the planet, other people and other life forms as well as the prospects of life without human beings.
Zvavahera is based in Harare, while Hwami resides in London, United Kingdom. In 2019 Hwami was the youngest person to have shown at the biennale. Here work explores identity, representation of the Black body, gender and sexuality.
Hwami is seen as someone who continues to flourish at an unprecedented rate and recently was ranked among the 40 under 40 Africa list.
Zvavahera and Hwami are both painters. Zvavahera was in the second group of artists that participated at the Zimbabwe pavilion during the 2013 Venice Biennale.
Zvavahera is considered one of the top Zimbabwean artists, who has made a name for herself with her abstract artworks and is capable of deeper awareness of and questions about the dimensions of life.
Congratulating the two and describing them as “great artists” whose work speaks volumes, the director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Raphael Chikukwa, said it was in the interests of the gallery to create platforms for artists at which they can showcase their skills and work globally.
Noting their achievement, Chikukwa said: “This shows that there is great talent that needs to continue nurturing, running parallel to appreciation by collectors, corporations, and government departments, because before we realise it, works by these artists will remain in cultural institutions across the seas – in America and Europe.”
Chikukwa says continued support of the country’s participation at the Venice Biennale by the Government is producing tangible results, while giving the country greater visibility within the global cultural creative sector. He believes Zimbabwean artists are capable of holding their own at this global Olympics of the Arts. – New Ziana.
Online Reporter
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