ARTISTS
Portia Zvavahera
For over two decades now, artist Portia Zvavahera, who was born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1985, has been creating a deeply personal and emotionally charged body of work. These works draw their inspiration from dreams, spiritual experiences, and a pictorial tradition marked, amongst other things, by Zimbabwean culture as well as religious iconography. They are characterized by their use of luminous color, complex layering of figures and patterns, and their dovetailing of different techniques 鈥� one that includes block printing and gestural painting.
Her works often depict ghostly figures 鈥� sometimes isolated, sometimes in pairs or groups 鈥� captured in moments of transformation, ecstasy or inner struggle. These figures appear in richly textured compositions that blur the borders between the spiritual and the physical, the dream-like and the tangible. The force field between visibility and concealment, presence and absence lends her work extraordinarily emotional impact.
From September 27, 2025 (opening: September 26) to February 8, 2026, the Fridericianum will be hosting the artist鈥檚 first institutional solo exhibition in Germany. The show brings together works from between 2019 and 2024 offering a concentrated insight into Zvavahera鈥檚 practice.
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For over two decades now, artist Portia Zvavahera, who was born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1985, has been creating a deeply personal and emotionally charged body of work. These works draw their inspiration from dreams, spiritual experiences, and a pictorial tradition marked, amongst other things, by Zimbabwean culture as well as religious iconography. They are characterized by their use of luminous color, complex layering of figures and patterns, and their dovetailing of different techniques 鈥� one that includes block printing and gestural painting.
Her works often depict ghostly figures 鈥� sometimes isolated, sometimes in pairs or groups 鈥� captured in moments of transformation, ecstasy or inner struggle. These figures appear in richly textured compositions that blur the borders between the spiritual and the physical, the dream-like and the tangible. The force field between visibility and concealment, presence and absence lends her work extraordinarily emotional impact.
From September 27, 2025 (opening: September 26) to February 8, 2026, the Fridericianum will be hosting the artist鈥檚 first institutional solo exhibition in Germany. The show brings together works from between 2019 and 2024 offering a concentrated insight into Zvavahera鈥檚 practice.
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