“[my father] never came to me in my dreams. Whenever I felt like I was on to something about remembering how he looked, I knew the flash would disappear as quickly as it came, so I drew as fast as I could.” - Admire Kamudzengerere
Admire Kamudzengerere (b. 1981, Zimbabwe) work explores identity, politics, and society, often informed by the structural and social issues that have marked Zimbabwe’s last decades. Kamudzengerere has gone on to create a powerful and broad range of works that consists of painting, drawing, performance, installation, video, and printmaking. His art, intense and indefinable, addresses the political violence and upheaval in his home country while tying into more global and universal themes like father-son relationships, displacement, and the position of an African artist within the global art world.
Kamudzengerere has exhibited his work across the globe and became the second Zimbabwean artist ever to be awarded a residency at Amsterdam’s Rijksakademie. In 2017, at the 57th Venice Biennale, his portraits occupied an entire room of the Zimbabwe Pavilion. In the following years, he went on to participate in the 11th Bamako Biennial, the 13th Dakar Biennial, and the 13th Cairo Biennial. He has been included in exhibitions at the Zeitz MoCAA in Cape Town, Kunsthaus Hamburg, the 5th Moscow Biennial, and the new Humboldt Forum in Berlin. His work is part of the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Block Museum at Northwestern University, and the National Gallery of Zimbabwe. He is represented by Catinca Tabacaru Gallery in Bucharest.