The Dreamcatcher

2019 - Painting (Painting)

180 x 150 cm.

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami

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This painting is the direct result of the artist’s research into her roots. Kudzanai-Violet Hwami sought to find a way to immerse herself in present-day Zimbabwe, spending a month at an artist-run space Dzimbanhete on the outskirts of Harare and living with a traditional healer. According to the artist, the experience left her feeling othered by the inability to fully integrate herself into the place she called home. The man depicted in the painting Dreamcatcher is of a generation that remembers Rhodesia, an unrecognized state that existed for 14 years between 1965 and 1979 before becoming The Republic of Zimbabwe in 1980. The work is of the artist’s great uncle, his representation symbolizes an entire generation of Zimbabwean men who fought in the Bush War against the white minority regime of Ian Smith in Rhodesia during the 1960s and 1970s. At the time there was much hope that Robert Mugabe would lead Zimbabwe to a better future. The title is a reference to the fact that this generation who fought for independence, felt they did not gain much for their sacrifices. The ruling Zanu PF party under Mugabe did not meet their dreams held for independence with Zimbabwe’s economy in tatters and years of hardship and financial deprivation.

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UK-based artist, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami was born in Gutu, Zimbabwe in 1993 and lived in South Africa from the ages of 9 to 17. Having lived in 3 different countries, she is concerned by the notion of home and converging cultures, questioning what it really means to be African. She explores issues around diaspora, displacement and identity based on her individual experience, understanding diaspora as a possibility of reinventing oneself and using art to reconcile the values of her home country with those she has been confronted with throughout her life. She creates vivid, large-scale paintings; mainly portraits of family and black body nudes mixed with symbolic elements. She draws most of her inspiration from old personal photographs that she reproduces with oil and acrylic mixed with collages of digital images found on internet. Black bodies are at the core of her work, through which, she explores questions of sexuality, gender and politics.

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Colors:

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• identity.n.02
• otherness.n.01
• association.n.04
• civil_war.n.01
• conflict.n.01
• trauma.n.02