In her exhibition Zvakazarurwa, translated from Shona to mean revelations, Zimbabwean painter Portia Zvavahera brings her world of dreams to Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket gallery this spring, creating a vivid and mystical, evocative and spiritually charged space. With only certain paintings being given English titles, Zvavahera elucidates “I dream in Shona and everything is Shona,” inviting viewers to share her culture, history, and personal philosophy.
In conversation with Fruitmarket director Fiona Bradley, the artist reflects upon her inspiration, revealing the creative process behind her multilayered, textured, and elliptical paintings. Zvavahera explains in a short video at the end of the exhibition how she records a dream on canvas and will in turn create a series of paintings so that she can make sense of the strange, meaningful, and troubling images that have stayed with her.
In Ranganai henyu (Devise your strategy) (2024), Zvavahera depicts a group of dark purple rats with eyes like small red beads that haunt the painting with a sinister presence and encroach upon a reclining human figure. But, Zvavahera explains, the figure is protected, cloaked in a white, lacelike shroud which gives her strength and security. Lace, a fabric integral to her work, represents the presence of the sacred, its delicate nature recalling the soft texture of a feathered wing or the hem of a woman’s dress. It also ties Zvavahera to a lineage of female artists who have long been incorporating elements of the tactile into their artwork through textiles, embedding the artist within both an international, cross-temporal history, as well as a truly unique and personal one.
For Zvavahera, spirituality, clairvoyance, symbolism, and energy forces are fundamental parts of reality, and the emotion generated therein manifests itself in a blending of oil inks, batik, and textile prints; the result is at once thoughtful and dedicated, dynamic and spontaneous.
Portia Zvavahera: Zvakazarurwa is on until 25 May at Fruitmarket.
Portia Zvavahera, Kudonhedzwa kwevanhu (Fallen People), 2022. Oil-based printing ink and oil bar on canvas. 212.5 x 299.6 cm. Courtesy Stevenson and David Zwirner. Photo: Mario Todeschini