The Dreamcatcher

2019 - Painting (Painting)

180 x 150 cm.

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami


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.


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.


Colors:



Related works sharing similar palette

James Patterson Awards $500 Bonuses to Bay Area Bookstore Employees
© » KQED

James Patterson Awards Bonuses to Bay Area Bookstore Employees | KQED Skip to Nav Skip to Main Skip to Footer Arts & Culture James Patterson Awards $500 Bonuses to Bay Area Bookstore Employees The Associated Press Dec 14 Save Article Save Article Failed to save article Please try again Facebook Share-FB Twitter Share-Twitter Email Share-Email Copy Link Copy Link Inside Green Apple on Clement Street; the bookstore has two additional locations, Green Apple Books on the Park and Browser Books...

29 Emerging Black Artists to Discover This Black History Month, Part 1
© » ARTSY

29 Emerging Black Artists to Discover This Black History Month, Part 1 | Artsy Skip to Main Content Art 29 Emerging Black Artists to Discover This Black History Month, Part 1 Isis Davis-Marks Feb 1, 2024 4:57PM To recognize Black History Month, Artsy is spotlighting 29 emerging Black artists—one for each day of this important month...

Malaysia halves Najib’s sentence, Hong Kong’s car-free village, China’s Picasso: 6 weekend reads you may have missed
© » SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

Malaysia halves Najib’s sentence, Hong Kong’s car-free village, China’s Picasso: 6 weekend reads you may have missed | South China Morning Post Advertisement Advertisement SCMP Highlights + FOLLOW Get more with my NEWS A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you Learn more Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak leaves a court in Kuala Lumpur in 2019...

Inquiring Minds Want to Know: ‘How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney?’
© » KQED

Inquiring Minds Want to Know: ‘How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney?’ | KQED Skip to Nav Skip to Main Skip to Footer The Do List Inquiring Minds Want to Know: ‘How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney?’ Listen Samantha Balaban Dec 4 Save Article Save Article Failed to save article Please try again Facebook Share-FB Twitter Share-Twitter Email Share-Email Copy Link Copy Link ‘How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney?’ (Text © 2023 by Mac Barnett...

Untitled
© » KADIST

Gabriel Sierra

2010

Untitled consists of a small wooden sculpture that leans against a wall...

See the Astonishing Artworks Planted in the Saudi Arabian Desert
© » ARTNET

The latest Desert X AlUla biennial features 15 newly commissioned pieces that explore the unseen...

Ghaib: Can the Unheard Speak?
© » ARTS EQUATOR

Ghaib: Can the Unheard Speak? | ArtsEquator Skip to content Faisal Tehrani’s 'Ghaib', a complex portrayal of family, agency and voice, contends that real emancipation is still elusive in our society...

Explain Me with Andy Adams of FlakPhoto: From Idyllic Photos to The Surveillance State
© » AFC

Explain Me with Andy Adams of FlakPhoto: From Idyllic Photos to The Surveillance State About AFC Board AFC Editions Donate Art F City Explain Me with Andy Adams of FlakPhoto: From Idyllic Photos to The Surveillance State by Paddy Johnson and William Powhida on November 2, 2020 Explain Me + Podcast Tweet Image by Andy Adams...

Anthems
© » KADIST

Geof Oppenheimer

2011

Designed as an installation timed spent is determined by the viewer, as with classical sculpture, Anthems is a piece that is in place, and in time, and an important genre of video within the collection...

The Missing Circle
© » KADIST

Asociación de Mujeres Tejiendo sueños y Sabores de Paz de Mampuján, Pavel Aguilar, Carlos Amorales; Jonathas de Andrade, Edgardo Aragón, Fredi Casco, Miguel Covarrubias, Sam Durant, León Ferrari, Jocelyn Gardner, Beatriz González, Pierre Huyghe, Cristóbal Lehyt, Jesse Lerner, Teresa Margoles, Guillermo Kuitca, Jesse Lerner, Noé Martinez, Alfredo López Morales, Cildo Meireles, Eustaquio Neves, Nohemí Pérez, Naufus Ramírez Figueroa, Antonio Reynoso, Rometti Costales, Pablo Swezey, Carla Zaccagnini...

The New York Art Advisor Curating the Boldest Family Dinners in Town - via Surface Mag
© » LARRY'S LIST

Eleanor Cayre doesn’t hesitate to break bread in a room filled with daring contemporary art and design....

Masterpieces from Britain’s prestigious National Gallery to go on show at Hong Kong’s Palace Museum for first time from Wednesday
© » SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

Masterpieces from Britain’s prestigious National Gallery to go on show at Hong Kong’s Palace Museum for first time from Wednesday | South China Morning Post Advertisement Advertisement Hong Kong culture + FOLLOW Get more with my NEWS A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you Learn more Vincent van Gogh’s “Long Grass with Butterflies”, painted in 1890, is one of the artworks from a British National Gallery tour on show at the city’s Palace Museum from Wednesday...

Hog feed 102
© » KADIST

Jared Owens

2022

Hog feed 102 is an exemplary work by Jared Owens that combines two of the artist’s primary signatures: the use of soil smuggled out of the grounds at F...

“Inside Voices”: There’s Something About Malay Women
© » ARTS EQUATOR

“Inside Voices”: There’s Something About Malay Women | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Danté Kim February 12, 2019 By Shanon Shah (983 words, four-minute read) I love plays with Malay women characters...

Szymon Szewczyk, Tears in My Eyes
© » GALERIA FOKSAL

Szymon Szewczyk, Tears in My Eyes - Galeria Foksal Polski English GALERIA FOKSAL #Las Rzeczy Exhibitions Artists About gallery Contact Szymon Szewczyk Szymon Szewczyk, Tears in My Eyes June 25, 2022 Szymon Szewczyk | Tears in My Eyes Opening: Saturday, June 25th, 2022, 4pm – 8pm June 25th – August 20th, 2022 Curator: Katarzyna Krysiak The exhibition will include works made with polymer mass using the intarsia technique, which Szymon Szewczyk has been implementing in his art for many years The intarsias will show dancing characters, bodies in motion, some more simplified than others...

Alternative Guide to the Universe with Ralph Rugoff
© » KADIST

Ralph Rugoff, Director of the Hayward Gallery in London, will discuss his recent exhibition Alternative Guide to the Universe , surveying “the work of self-taught artists and architects, fringe physicists and visionary inventors.” The evening will feature a selection of works by William Scott (Oakland) that were included in the exhibition, on loan from Creative Growth Art Center ...

‘If I start thinking I hate making baubles that’s the time to retire’: Will Shakspeare’s craft – in pictures
© » THE GUARDIAN

‘If I start thinking I hate making baubles that’s the time to retire’: Will Shakspeare’s craft – in pictures | Art and design | The Guardian Skip to main content The artisans ‘If I start thinking I hate making baubles that’s the time to retire’: Will Shakspeare’s craft – in pictures Will Shakspeare’s Christmas baubles...

Camera of Wonders
© » KADIST

In a time of near endless image production and exchange Camera of Wonders presents an associative display of more than one hundred photographic works spanning the history of photography...

The Ideal Museum: Art Historian Kenneth Clark on the Formation of Western Institutions, in 1954
© » ARTNEWS RETROSPECTIVE

Kenneth Clark on the Formation of Western Institutions, in 1954 – ARTnews.com Skip to main content By Kenneth Clark Plus Icon Kenneth Clark View All March 19, 2021 1:37pm Johan Zoffany, Tribuna of the Uffizi , 1772–78...