The 2022 London exhibition Muzivi Wenzira brought together seven contemporary artists from Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe through work concerned with material, objects and the paths of artistic practice.
The title translates from chiShona as “the one who uses a footpath.” It referred both to the route an artist follows over a career and to the larger social and political contexts surrounding each work.
Seven practices across three countries
The exhibition included Namibian artists Nicky Marais, Actofel Ilovu and Libita Sibungu, who presented painting, mixed media and drawing.
Zimbabwe was represented by Sky Salanje and Isheanesu Dondo, while Thina Dube and Aneesah Girie participated from South Africa.
The selection focused on materiality and on the artists’ relationships with the objects they depicted or used. This approach allowed the exhibition to connect different practices without reducing them to a single national or regional style.
Two galleries building a shared platform
Muzivi Wenzira was organised through a collaboration between StArt Art Gallery in Windhoek and Guns & Rain in Johannesburg. Both galleries worked with contemporary artists from Southern Africa, including emerging practitioners.
The London presentation was StArt Art Gallery’s first exhibition in the United Kingdom. It placed the artists before a new audience while preserving the regional partnerships through which the work had been selected and supported.
The exhibition’s title resisted the idea of an effortless path into the international art world. A footpath can be indirect, difficult and made through repeated use.
By bringing seven artists together in London, Muzivi Wenzira made those individual journeys visible while also showing the importance of galleries based in Southern Africa in creating routes for contemporary work to circulate internationally.