Imba Yerumbidzo (House of Praise)
October 17, 2024–March 3, 2025
Portia Zvavahera (1985) is a Zimbabwean painter who lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Portia Zvavahera’s paintings are based on her dreams. Steeped in Christian convictions and indigenous Zimbabwean beliefs, the artist considers her nocturnal visions to be prophecies, the emotional intensity of which she seeks to transcribe through painting. They raise questions about life and death, the material and the spiritual, love and solitude, the personal and intimate world that touches on the universal.
For Open Space #15, her first solo exhibition in France, Portia Zvavahera has conceived a new painting entitled Imba Yerumbidzo (House of Praise). Composed of eight canvases and nearly 17 meters’ long, this monumental painting unfolds in a curve across the gallery walls, thereby transforming the exhibition space.
Portia Zvavahera conjures a phantasmagorical universe in this colossal work. Multiple silhouettes appear across the surface of the canvas; their deformed, roughly sketched limbs diluted by an expressionist touch that emphasizes their ghostly presence. The composition is based on a juxtaposition and superimposition of shapes and motifs using a variety of techniques: including paint, applied with a brush or stick, stencils and etchings to create patterns that use traditional Zimbabwean batik method. Rich in materials and texture, these shapes and motifs contrast with the areas left blank, which evoke the “angels”, as seen by the artist in her dream and which are at the origin of the painting.
Curator: Ludovic Delalande (Fondation Louis Vuitton)
About the artist
Portia Zvavahera (1985) is a Zimbabwean painter who lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe. Portia Zvavahera studied at the BAT Visual Art Studios of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, from 2003 to 2004 before graduating in Fine Art from Harare Polytechnic in 2006.
The artist has had several solo exhibitions with Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg (2014-2023), as well as a solo show with Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles (2017) alongside solo and group exhibitions with David Zwirner in London, New York and Los Angeles (2020-2024). The National Gallery of Zimbabwe (Harare) presented her solo exhibition Under My Skin in 2010, and in 2020, the Institute of Contemporary Art Indian Ocean, Port Louis, Mauritius, presented her solo exhibition Walk of Life. She participated in the exhibition Dudziro: Interrogating the Visions of Religious Beliefs in the Zimbabwean Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. In 2022, her work was included in the 59th Venice Biennale.
In October 2024, Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge (England) and Fruitmarket Gallery (Edinburgh) will co-organize Zvakazarurwa, Portia Zvavahera’s first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom.
Portia Zvavahera is represented by Stevenson (Cape Town, Johannesburg) and David Zwirner (London, New York, Paris, Hong Kong and Los Angeles).
Open Space program
Open Space is a program dedicated to contemporary art, offering the possibility of a first solo exhibition and the production of a new work.
Since 2018, this programme has hosted solo exhibitions of Jean-Marie Appriou (1986, France), Matt Copson (1992, UK), Anna Hulačová (1984, Czech Republic), Hoël Duret (1988, France), Lauren Halsey (1987, US), Meriem Bennani (1988, Morocco), Jean Claracq (1991, France), Bianca Bondi (1986, South Africa), Özgür Kar (1992, Turkey), Lydia Ourahmane (1992, Algeria), Ndayé Kouagou (1992, France), Alex Ayed (1989, Tunisia), Xie Lei (1983, China), Lu Yang (1984, China).
