PORTIA ZVAVAHERA AT KETTLES YARD
Portia Zvavahera
‘Zvakazarurwa’ (translating to ‘Revelations’ in Shona), is Portia Zvavahera’s first show outside her native Zimbabwe , although it did feature in the Venice biennale For a small gallery Kettles Yard embraces large scale works of art- but Zvavahera’s must be among the vastest yet seen.
The canvases are on an epic scale. The sheer size of them is impressive. Yet they are strangely uniform in colour , a red -pink wash suffuses most of them ; associated surely, with menstrual blood .Women in childbirth or in waking dreams are the artist’s preoccupation - each picture has some deep connecton with the physical and psychical life of Zvavahera herself.
More varied are the canvases with religious themes like ‘ Fallen People’. The artist links the sense of revelation with chapters of St. John’s dream visions in the Book of Revelations. He imagines heaven as full of the righteous in robes, singing to the Lamb .This artist in paintings like ‘Fallen People’s has a mixed group of white angelic figures , featureless in fact.We see how she achieves this vacancy by skilfully scraping paint from the canvas.
Disturbingly, rats feature. As large black and populous they fill the canvases with their dark menace, and multiply ( as rats will) . Depicted as large aggressive creatures, they represent the threat the artist experiences in her dreams. In an accompanying video she explains their presence as purgation of dread, a therapy to leave her cleansed of fears. The psychotherapist who accompanied me on my visit, moved straightaway to the dreamscape theory of Karl Jung, where horror visions must be addressed and dealt with. Here they are all pervasive and appear to have a worrying free run of the art works.
Zvavahera’s work is also religious. She feels, like William Blake, guided by a Higher Power -like him - the Christian God . This artist also hints at the culture of her Shona people and their approach to good and evil.
The Labour Ward is one explicitly figurative work, but even here the figures appear supine – they appear tethered by the writs to the bed frames. Painted in slub muted colours , it too has a depressive atmosphere. There is dread here too, I perceived.
Impressive is the scale and the manipulation of techniques of paint and oil on canvas – less so is the drawing , hands and figures are semi- naïve, flattened in perspective.
Interesting to see an African artist here in Cambridge in the same year as looted African art makes its way back – painfully slowly – to Benin .Catch the recent film Dahomey for a brilliant artistic account of this repatriation of the stolen Art. Sometimes in Zvavahera’s paintings, the life and colour – so welcome to see some green -celebrate Africa and its complex verdant landscape.
The Kettle’s Yard show coincides with a presentation of the work at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, and is being organised with the Fruitmarket in Edinburgh where it will travel next year.
Portia Zvavahera_The Energy
Portia Zvavahera_Labour Ward.
Portia Zvavahera_Fallen People
