Kudzanai-Violet Hwami

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami’s paintings combine visual fragments from a myriad of sources, such as online and archival images, and personal photographs, which collapse past and present. Autobiographical in nature, her works address how in a digitised world of infinite images we construct a sense of self, or experience and try to understand one another in a complex social reality.

Hwami’s work often speaks to the fallibility of memory as images are produced and reproduced, impressing themselves upon us while becoming unmoored from their original sources. Through her process, the artist questions things that appear fixed, or possess apparent finality, opening up a space of imagination and discovery shaped in part by her years growing up in Zimbabwe and South Africa, her interest in metaphysics and spirituality, and expressions of contemporary Black and Queer identities. Here, the historical medium of painting is folded into a collage-like approach analogous with the layering of formats we associate with social media platforms today. ‘I think I am seeking freedom,’ Hwami has said. ‘Collage making, which is a process I use to create a picture, has given me absolute freedom as a strategy…’.

About the Artist

Born in Gutu, Zimbabwe in 1993, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami currently lives and works in the UK. In 2016, the same year she graduated from Wimbledon College of Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, she was awarded the Clyde & Co Art 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. In 2019, Hwami presented work at the 58th Venice Biennale as part of the Zimbabwe Pavilion, the youngest artist to participate in the Biennale. In 2022 she returned to the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia as part of The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani.

Her work has been exhibited at leading institutional venues including Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel (2022); Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris, (2025); Philadelphia Museum of Art (2024); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2023); Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (2022), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2021–22); Hayward Gallery, London (2021), and Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (2021), among others.

In November 2025, the solo exhibition Kudzanai-Violet Hwami: They have always been here opens at Kunsthal Rotterdam (8 November–12 April 2026). The group exhibition When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting, curated by Koyo Kouoh, travels to Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden (10 October 2025–30 August 2026).

Hwami’s work is held in public collections including Fondation Blachère, Apt, France; Government Art Collection, London, UK; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, USA; Pérez Art Museum Miami, USA; KADIST Foundation, Paris, France; Norval Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa; Pinault Collection, Paris, France; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Tate, UK; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, USA; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, USA; and Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa.