Portia Zvavahera

In her paintings, artist Portia Zvavahera gives form to emotions that manifest from other realms and dimensions beyond the domains of everyday life and thought. Zvavahera’s ethereal paintings are inspired by dreams, mysticism, and the figurative painting tradition of Zimbabwe. Her deeply personal visions are realized through layers of vibrant color and ornate, veil-like patterns that the artist builds up into complex surfaces through a combination of expressive brushwork and elaborate printmaking techniques. Most often, the artist’s larger-than-life paintings communicate a spiritual understanding of quotidian moments, including renderings of her family, shape-shifting animals, figures attending wedding processions or kneeling in prayer, or women giving birth and engaged in secular rituals typically marked as feminine. Sumptuous hues and expressive brushwork gives way to fantastic figures that conjure spiritual or transcendental associations and form a powerful meditation on the cornerstones of our earthly existence—life and death, pain and pleasure, isolation and connection, and love and loss.

Zvavahera was born in 1985 in Harare, Zimbabwe, where she continues to live and work. She studied at the BAT Visual Arts Studio, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, and earned her degree in fine arts from Harare Polytechnic in 2006. Zavavhera was among the five artists representing Zimbabwe at the 2014 Venice Biennale and was most recently included in the 2022 Venice Biennale The Milk of Dreams, where she presented a suite of four new works that continue her exploration of painting as a form of spiritual catharsis. Her work is held in the collections of institutions including the Johannesburg Art Gallery; Minneapolis Institute of Art; National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Tate, London; University of Chicago Booth School of Business; and the Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Zvavahera is currently represented by David Zwirner.