Kudzanai Chiurai / Dying to be men / 2009
Goodman Gallery is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Cape Town by young Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai Chiurai. Based in Johannesburg, Chiurai’s practice as an artist and activist has garnered him considerable attention. Whilst working within the formal gallery system, his practice is also located in informal networks and situations. In the lead-up to the 2008 Zimbabwean elections Chiurai distributed stencils highlighting its political situation at solidarity meetings, creating a viral campaign in the streets of Johannesburg. This was followed by the publication of a series of open edition agitprop posters.
Dying to be Men continues Chiurai’s interest in the aesthetics of propaganda, and interrogates the visual legacy of political representation. At the convergence of major political events – elections in South Africa, the USA and Zimbabwe – Chiurai hones in on aspects of the image of the black president and his cabinet in particular. As such, the works on show unpack notions of masculinity and power, as evocatively suggested by the title of the exhibition.
Chiurai completed a BAFA at the University of Pretoria and has participated in a number of local and international group exhibitions, including the Dakar Biennale, Senegal, African Now, a traveling exhibition in Scandinavia, as well as New Painting, a local traveling exhibition in 2006. His work is represented in the collections of BHP Biliton and Nando’s UK , amongst others.
Artworks
About
Kudzanai Chiurai
Kudzanai Chiurai (b. 1981, Harare, Zimbabwe) is a multidisciplinary artist exploring notions and cycles of political, economic, and social strife present in post-colonial societies. His work interrogates urgent social issues, such as xenophobia, exile, displacement, the psychological experiences of urban spaces, as well as the Western imprint on Africa.
In 2024, Chiurai’s film We Live in Silence (Chapters 1 – 7) was on view as part of the main exhibition at the 60th Venice Biennale Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa. In 2023, photographs from the artist’s We Live in Silence series were part of A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography, at TATE Modern curated by Osei Bonsu.
In 2013, Chiurai’s Conflict Resolution series was exhibited at DOCUMENTA (13) (2012) in Kassel and the film Iyeza was one of the few African films to be included in the New Frontier shorts programme at the Sundance Film Festival.
Chiurai’s project, The Library of Things We Forgot to Remember, is built around his collecting practice which focuses on preserving archives and memorialising social and cultural history from southern Africa. The project exists in the form of an archive of materials situated in Johannesburg including vinyls, posters, paintings and more, drawn from private African collections. Each time this archive is exhibited, Chiurai invites a different librarian to interrogate the archive and curate an exhibition.
Solo exhibitions include: Genesis [Je n’isi isi], We Live in Silence, IFA, Stuttgart (2019); Madness and Civilization, Kalmar Konsmuseum, Sweden (2018); Now and Then: Guercino and Kudzanai Chiurai, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (2018); and Regarding the Ease of Others, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (2017).
Group shows include: FLIGHT, Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2023); Ubuntu, a Lucid Dream, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2020); Art/Afrique, Le nouvel atelier, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2017); The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2014) and travelled to the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2015); Figures & Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2011); and Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011).
Collections include: Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson; Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami; Pigozzi Collection, Geneva; Walther Collection, New York; and Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town.
Chiurai lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe.
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