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TIWANI CONTEMPORARY, LAGOS
13 Elsie Femi Pearse StreetVictoria IslandLagos, NigeriaOpening times:
Tue - Sat: 10am to 6pm and by appointment
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Tiwani Contemporary is very pleased to present the group exhibition, I See You featuring new and recent works by artists Virginia Chihota, Gideon Gomo, Masimba Hwati, Gareth Nyandoro and Portia Zvavahera.
The artists studied at the National Gallery School of Visual Arts and Design (formerly B.A.T. Visual Arts School), National Gallery of Zimbabwe during the 1990s in Harare, Zimbabwe. Chihota, Zvavahera, Hwati and Nyandoro received international attention with their participation in Pavillion of Zimbabwe’s 2013 and 2015 editions for La Biennale di Venezia , under the artistic direction of Raphael Chikukwa, now the Executive Director at National Gallery of Zimbabwe.The artists remain close and actively maintain their international careers and profiles based in Harare, Addis Ababa and Vienna. Spanning painting, sculpture, performance and drawing, the exhibition captures the ways in which each artist internalises and responds to the notion of environment. Prior to the exhibition, Zvavahera and Gomo will be artists in residence at Guest Artist Space Foundation, Lagos a subsidiary of the Yinka Shonibare Foundation. Here, the two artists will research adire, tie-and-dying techniques, printmaking and sculpture and assemblages made from local materials respectively.Connecting Harare to Lagos, the exhibition presents a unique consideration of intercontinental exchange and friendship through reflections that manifest materially featuring sonic, sculptural and two-dimensional works. As an expression of friendships cultivated over two decades between these artists, I See You is a marker of time, community, and a significant moment in the careers of these artists.Together, the works present metaphysical attributes of this contemporary moment; physical environments and places become entangled with spiritual energies through conceptualizations of her home country. As interplays of screen-printed, flat forms, painterly markings and negative space, each work draws the viewer into Chihota’s dynamic patchworks of stenciled forms, broad strokes and radiant colors.
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In a departure from her works to date, Portia Zvavahera uses materials sourced in Lagos, such as bees wax and primed linen, to continue her exploration of painting and print-making. With an interest in adire, a popular technique in Nigeria of dying fabric that was traditionally done with indigo and at times incorporates repeated stenciled motifs, Zvavahera continues to interpret her dreams in her exhibited works. These compositions merge abstract and figural forms that seem to depict connections, isolation and fear through gestural contours. Zvavahera leaves the viewer to connected fragmented narratives, perhaps as an invitation to imagine how her unique encounter with Lagos, briefly living and working in this city as an artist-in-residence at Guest Artist Space (G.A.S. Foundation), informs this body of work.Gideon Gomo’s stoneworks are contemporary inflections of Zimbabwean springstone carving, a cornerstone of modern art in that region. Bringing this technique into conversation with contemporary modes of making, Gomo combines this granite with other materials such as brass cymbals, appropriated as headgear, halos or adornment. Each head is emotive, a contrast with the relatively inanimate Shona stone carvings earlier referenced. Gomo began these sculptures in Harare, and completed them in Lagos, also while an artist-in-residence at G.A.S. Foundation.During this period, he also worked with mahogany and cedar wood sourced from Makoko in Lagos. With these large trunks, Gomo used a chainsaw to transform these heads that connect aesthetically to figural forms that also allude to Zimbabwean stone carving. The subject matters he explores through these wooden heads range from bleaching among men in Lagos, gender obscurity, and emotional burdens that he personally bears when compared to his ancestors. The latter is suggested by the incorporation of hata–referred to as ‘headrest’ or osuka in Lagos. These torus, tire-like shapes, are made with fabric or plant fibers, and are used across the continent to ease the burden of carrying a heavy load on one’s head.Masimba Hwati’s work connects to that of Gomo’s as he too integrates brass material from musical instruments into his work. In this sonic approach to sculpture, Hwati presents instruments that are composed of plastic and wooden spheres, goat horns, skateboard wheels, and integrated percussive instruments. Presented on white plinths, Hwati’s sculptures confront modernist, colonial approaches to displaying art, harnessing interventions and hybridized ideas of otherness. These works are activated during a one-time performance that responds to Dzikamunhenga–an ancient Shona instrument, and will be realised with Lagos-based musician, Temitope Fash. The two artists plan to use Hwati’s sculpture to create earth vibrations, through a conduit that situates the earth as a third collaborator–and as an anchor of human life, a place to which ancestors return upon their death.Connecting Harare to Lagos, the exhibition presents a unique consideration of intra-continental exchange and friendship through contemporary reflections that manifest as performative, cooperative and spiritual. As an expression of friendships cultivated over two decades between these artists, and others that have emerged in the development of the project, I See You is a marker of time, community, and a significant moment in the careers of these artists.
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WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION
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Gideon Gomo
Ko Iniwo Ndisina Hata, 2022Mahogany and Cedar wood, Brass plates, Manilla rope, Ram horns and Hata/cloth head gear
Variable -
Masimba Hwati
Dzikamunhenga 1, 2022Mixed media
170 x 29 x 30 cm
66 7/8 x 11 3/8 x 11 3/4 in -
Masimba Hwati
Dzikamunhenga 2, 2022Mixed media
130 x 57 x 33 cm
51 1/8 x 22 1/2 x 13 in -
Masimba Hwati
Dzikamunhenga 3, 2022Mixed media
126 x 50 x 25 cm
49 5/8 x 19 3/4 x 9 7/8 in -
Masimba Hwati
Dzikamunhenga 4, 2022Mixed media
120 x 62 x 40 cm
47 1/4 x 24 3/8 x 15 3/4 in -
Masimba Hwati
Dzikamunhenga 5, 2022Mixed Media
170 x 92 x 67 cm
66 7/8 x 36 1/4 x 26 3/8 in -
Portia Zvavahera
Ranganai henyu (devise your strategy), 2022Oil based printing ink and oil bar on Linen
222 x 295 cm
87 3/8 x 116 1/8 in -
Virginia Chihota
Nharo Dzakanyarara (a quiet resistance), 2021Serigraphy on linen
225 x 284 cm
88 5/8 x 111 3/4 in
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I See You: Virginia Chihota, Gideon Gomo, Masimba Hwati, Gareth Nyandoro and Portia Zvavahera
Past viewing_room