Tongue on Fire

Location

Country: USA
City: Washington DC
Place: British Embassy

The use of collage in Kudzanai-Violet's practice speaks to her experiences of geographical dislocation, displacement and regrouping. It forms the starting point for paintings such as this one where the artist sources family photographs, online archival images and vintage pornographic images, layering these with other motifs to develop compositions. She was born in Gutu, Zimbabwe, and later lived in South Africa from the ages of nine to seventeen, before coming to the UK. She likens this way of composition making to the contemporary gathering of an individual's interests, experiences and past lives to create an identity for themselves that is not tied to geography and that operates in the digital realm – a process she sees as a type of digital collage. These ideas of identity formation, where physical geography collapses into the digital space, sit alongside the artist's use of paint, a visual language that belongs firmly in the physical rather than digital world. Speaking about her work the artist says, ‘With the collapsing of geography and time and space, no longer am I confined in a singular society but simultaneously I am experiencing Zimbabwe and South Africa and the UK, in my mind. I’m in the UK, but I carry those places with me everywhere I go.’

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami was born in Zimbabwe and later lived in South Africa before moving to the UK, where she now lives and works. She presented work at the 58th Venice Biennale as part of the Zimbabwe Pavilion in 2019, the youngest artist to participate in the Biennale. That same year she had her first institutional solo exhibition, (15,952km) via Trans – Sahara Hwy N1 at Gasworks, London. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, New York and Gropius Bau, Berlin (both 2023); Dulwich Picture Gallery, London (2022) and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2021-22); Hayward Gallery London (2021); Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris (2021); Les Ateliers de Rennes – Biennale d’Art Contemporain, Rennes, France (2018); Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa (2018); Discoloured Margins, and at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe (2017). In 2016, the same year she graduated from Wimbledon College of Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, she was awarded the Clyde & Co. Award and the Young Achiever of the Year Award at the Zimbabwean International Women’s Awards, as well as being shortlisted for Bloomberg New Contemporaries.

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

acrylic (paint), canvas, oil, oil paint, painting (as object name)

Artist

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami (1993 - )

Title

Tongue on Fire

Date

2021

Medium

oil and acrylic on canvas

Dimensions

height: 100 cm; width: 100 cm; depth: 3.5 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Victoria Miro, January 2022

Provenance

Victoria Miro Gallery, London UK; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 11 January 2022

GAC number

19031