Misheck Masamvu || Talk to me while I'm eating || 2021
I am zipped in my mind space Still participating in spaces of interaction to interrogate my capacity to deal with others. To locate and focus on the source power at the table The spilled/ spoiled/ broken table at the last supper
— Extract from Talk to me while I’m eating (2020), a poem by Misheck Masamvu
Goodman Gallery presents Talk to me while I’m eating, an exhibition of abstract colour-rich paintings alongside figurative pencil drawings by pioneering Zimbabwean artist Misheck Masamvu.
Artworks
About
Misheck Masamvu
Oscillating between abstraction and figuration, Misheck Masamvu’s (b. 1980, Mutare, Zimbabwe) works allow him to address the past while searching for a way of being in the world. As one of the most significant artists from Zimbabwe, Masamvu’s work offers a renewed understanding of visual culture in Africa and the decolonial project more broadly. Rhythmic lines and layered fields of colour have become a prominent language for Masamvu to explore structures of power and how history comes to bear on the contemporary moment, but also how one can adapt to a new way of interacting with the world.
Selected solo exhibitions: Show me how ruins make a home, A Gentil Carioca, São Paulo (2024); Exit Wounds, Goodman Gallery, New York (2024); Safety Pin, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town (2023); Pivot, Bernier/Eliades Gallery, Brussels (2023); Talk to me while I’m eating, Goodman
Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2021); Hata, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town (2019); Still Still, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town; Misheck Masamvu, Institut Français, Paris, France (2015); Disputed Seats, Influx Contemporary Art, Lisbon, Portugal (2009).
Notable group exhibitions include: Kuvhunura/Kupinda nemwenje mudziva, Fondation Blachere Bonnieux, France (2024); Translations: Afro-Asian Poetics, The Institutum, Singapore (2024); Inside Out, Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Geneva (2022); Witness: Afro Perspectives, El Espacio 23, Miami, USA (2020); Allied with Power: African and African Diaspora Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami (2020); Two Together, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town (2020); Five Bobh: Painting at the End of an Era, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (2017); Africa 2.0 > is there a Contemporary African art?, Influx Contemporary Art, Lisbon (2010); Art, Migration and Identity,, Africa Museum, Arnhem (2008); and 696 , National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare (2008).
Major international exhibitions include: The ‘t’ is silent , 8th Biennial of Painting, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium (2022); STILL ALIVE , 5th Aichi Triennale, Aichi, Japan (2022), NIRIN , 22nd Sydney Biennale, Sydney (2020); Incerteza Viva (Live Uncertainty), the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo (2016) and his international debut at Zimbabwe’s inaugural Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011).
Collections include: A4 Arts Foundation (Cape Town, South Africa); Braunsfelder Family Collection (Cologne, Germany); Uieshema Collection (Tokyo, Japan); Perez Art Museum (Miami, USA); Pigozzi Collection (Geneva, Switzerland); Taguchi Art Collection (Tokyo, Japan); Fukutake Foundation (Auckland, New Zealand); COMMA Foundation (Damme, Belgium); ANA Collection (Lagos, Nigeria); Sigg Art Foundation, Le Castellet, France; Fondation Gandur pour l’Art (Geneva, Switzerland); and Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Cape Town, South Africa).
Masamvu lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Download full CV