Inside the Harare Zimbabwe Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Government House in Salisbury, modern-day Harare, Zimbabwe

Portia Zvavahera: Zvakazarurwa at Frutimarket youtube (2025)

Born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1985, Portia Zvavahera is one of the outstanding artists of her generation. She has developed a painting practice that combines a unique combination of techniques – painting, printmaking and batik – to construct a visually beguiling personal cosmology featuring figures, creatures, shapes and shadows that first appear to her in her dreams. Zvakazarurwa means ‘revelations’ in Shona, the language in which Zvavahera thinks and dreams, and is curated by Tamar Garb, a recognised authority on contemporary art from Africa as well as the work of women artists and feminist aesthetics. Garb has followed Zvavahera’s practice for some years, and made several visits to her studio in the garden of her house in Harare in the course of preparing the exhibition, talking with her about her work and selecting together a sequence of paintings that root the most recent in the evolution of her image making since 2012. The earliest works in the exhibition combine images of childbirth and motherhood with repetitive mark making and pattern. They are visceral, even shocking. Recent works are equally direct, but are more closely aligned to particular dreams. The works Zvavahera made in 2024, specifically for this exhibition, relate to one particular recurring dream in which she struggles to protect her family from malign forces – ‘bad energies’ – that take the form of rats. Zvavahera’s paintings are beautiful, complex surfaces which claim our attention immediately, yet also stay with us over time, unfurling in our mind’s eye as we take the artist’s singular vision with us out of the gallery and into the world. This exhibition is organised in collaboration with Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. Supported by The Ampersand Foundation, Mercedes Vilardell and David Zwirner. via YT caption https://palianshow.wordpress.com/2026/03/22/portia-zvavahera/

Harare Central, Harare, Zimbabwe