Kudzanai Chiurai / Harvest of Thorns / 2013
Goodman Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new and recent work by Kudzanai Chiurai in our Johannesburg space. The show, titled Harvest of Thorns, is a culmination of Chiurai’s projects around public acts of violence as documented and represented by the media. Harvest of Thorns is loosely based on the book of the same title by author Shimmer Chinodya.
Chinodya gives insight into the guerrilla warfare that ensued after Rhodesia’s split from Britain in 1965. Through various conversations with family members. His interest in public acts of violence is thus a real issue of personal relevance. Chiurai asks us to consider subjective mourning for these public acts of violence including the recent events that took place in Marikana. His film Moyo is the third in a series including Iyeza and Creation. Moyo – meaning air – tenderly articulates the moment in death when the air or spirit leaves the body. The woman in the film witnesses this moment and cries ‘Warazulwa ngenxa yami’ (you were ripped and torn for my sake) as she wipes the wounds of a lifeless figure.
The exhibition interrogates a contemporary African notion of sacrifice, though not enquiring into its necessity. Violence and sacrifice are evidenced through Chiurai’s use of sheepskin, bandages, wood, blood-red beads and bronzed horns. Chiurai alludes to ritual practices of war, cleansing and burial.
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.
Download full CV