Portia Zvavahera: Zvibereko zvemweya wangu

In this new body of work, Zvavahera expands her practice with familiar motifs and narratives; her works are populated by symbolic creatures that become powerful conduits for the interpretation of spiritual visions and the contemplation of our earthly existence.

Zvavahera’s paintings give form to emotions beyond the domains of everyday life and thought. Her vivid imagery is rooted in the cornerstones of our earthly existence—life and death, pain and pleasure, isolation and connection, and love and loss. These deeply personal visions are realized through layers of vibrant color and ornate, veil-like patterns that the artist builds up into palimpsestic surfaces through a combination of expressive brushwork and elaborate printmaking techniques. Zvavahera’s compositions draw on particular traditions of figuration in past and present Zimbabwe, first expressed in the work of Thomas Mukarobgwa in the 1960s, while also pointing to postwar artistic practices that probe the nature of the human condition.

Themes of love, loss, fear, family, and protection recur throughout this new series of paintings, mirroring her broader practice. The show’s title, Zvibereko zvemweya wangu, loosely translates from Shona as the “fruits of my soul,” aptly describing the intense creative output behind these works. These monumental paintings are among her most energetic to date, deeply inspired by her love for family and, particularly, the passing of her late grandmother.

In Zvibereko zvemweya wangu, Zvavahera resumes her study of dreamscapes, delving into subject matter that women, especially mothers, have experienced across time. She strips away the protective veneer of modern society, exposing core emotions that relate to the profundity of life and death. Incorporating new motifs like vessels, trees, water lilies, and snakes, Zvavahera’s paintings guide viewers on journeys, telling abstracted stories about the strength within the maternal and matriarchal world, where reality and imagination merge.

Shona is the artist’s native language, which she speaks at home; titles in Shona are provided with a translation only when Zvavahera feels that the English words suffice. Experimenting with batik and block printing, oil sticks, and acrylic paints, Zvavahera’s canvases are applied with layers, and then, like dreams, unfold into camouflaged compositions rich in symbolism and psychological depth. 

When completing a new body of work, Zvavahera often includes what she calls a “victory painting,” one work that embodies a moment of overcoming, a triumph over a specific experience: “Lifted Away is the victory painting. We are flying away, we are going somewhere. We are leaving all this behind us. We are flying.”

Concurrent with Zvibereko zvemweya wangu, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston presents Portia Zvavahera’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States. Curated by Ruth Erickson, Hidden Battles / Hondo dzakavanzika includes a selection of recent and new works that focuses on the animals that populate the artist’s dreams and pictorial world. Like the rest of her practice, these works navigate a broad range of references, from Shona beliefs to the flattened pictorial field of modern art. Hidden Battles / Hondo dzakavanzika is on view through January 2026.

Zvavahera is also the subject of a solo institutional debut in Germany at the Fridericianum in Kassel. On view through January 19, 2026, this exhibition presents works made between 2019 and 2024 and offers an illuminating overview of her work for this new audience.  
 
The Fridericianum show is the latest in a number of institutional presentations in Europe over the past few years. Zvavahera’s exhibition Zvakazarurwa traveled from Kettle’s Yard at the University of Cambridge in 2024 to the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh in 2025, and her exhibition Imba Yerumbidzo (House of Praise) was organized by Ludovic Delalande at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2024.