Kudzanai ChiuraiHarvest of Thorns
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.
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.
Harvest of Thorns will also feature drawings and films shown on dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012, which formed part of Chiurai’s series titled Conflict Resolution. The series, Chiurai explains, “grapples with the issue of conflict in the contemporary moment in Africa. The spaces within which conflict has been taking place vary to the extent of our own understanding of what defines conflict. Our understanding of resolution is therefore also brought to the fore as we question the validity and nature of force used in our attempts at peace.”
Kudzanai Chiurai is an internationally acclaimed young artist born in Zimbabwe. He was the first black student to graduate with a BA Fine Art from the University of Pretoria. Born one year after Zimbawe’s emergence from white-ruled Rhodesia – Chiurai’s early work focused on the political, economic and social strife in his homeland.
Chiurai has held numerous solo exhibitions since 2003 and has participated in various local and international exhibitions, including Figures & Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which acquired Chiurai’s work for their collection. His Conflict Resolution series was included in dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel in 2012. His film Iyeza was one of the few African films to be included in the New Frontier shorts programme at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013.
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Artist Bio
Kudzanai Chiurai (b. 1981, Harare, Zimbabwe) is a multidisciplinary artist exploring notions and cycles of political, economic, and social strife present in postcolonial 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 vinyl, 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.
