THE paintings in the exhibition “Portia Zvavahera: Zvakazarurwa”, at Kettle’s Yard, in Cambridge, are about the power of prayer. While it has become possible more recently in the mainstream art world to make a case for the level of attention involved in creating or viewing art as equating to the experience of contemplative prayer, it is very unusual to find prayer as the subject of contemporary art or for series of paintings to reveal how prayer changes the lives of those who pray. Nevertheless, that is what these paintings do.
Through the creation of her paintings, Zvavahera explores her experiences of dealing with bad energies in life. These energies are experienced in dreams — nightmares — that provide a symbolic visual vocabulary to understand the energies that are being faced in life. In the case of the most complete series of paintings shown here (in Gallery 1), the visual image for the bad energies is that of rats. The rats surround and attack, generating fear. Prayer brings a protective cover that provides the necessary confidence to embrace and control these energies and fears.
Zvavahera has explained that she started the series by making “sketches when I was pregnant, when I was dreaming about rats and other creatures coming into my sleep”. “At the time”, she says, “I couldn’t even sleep with the lights off, so I wanted to translate that feeling and release it through this body of work.”
The title of the first work in the series is Pane rima rakakomba, a Shona phrase that translates as “There’s too much darkness.” Zvavahera says: “it’s a spiritual thing, it’s the feeling of complete and total darkness, when you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel and you feel hopeless.” Nevertheless, while she paints “mostly painful moments”, her practice is “like a healing process”, as for her: “the dreams are like future-telling, letting me know what to do next or what’s happening in the spirit world that I should be aware of. And then I should take action in prayer.”
Courtesy Stevenson and David Zwirner Photo Jack Hems © the artistPortia Zvavahera, The Energy Present (2024), oil-based printing ink and oil bar on linen
At Kettle’s Yard, this series ends with Hide There, a work depicting Zvavahera kneeling in prayer in a hidden place away from the rats while covered in a protective veil that, in her works, links to a wedding gown. This is the place of emotional safety that prayer opens up in the midst of the bad energies that threaten personal equilibrium. It is a beautiful image that suggests green pastures and still waters after a journey through the valley of the shadow of death.
Before reaching this point of resolution, there have been images entitled Ranganal henyu (Devise Your Strategy) and Fighting Energies as the series begins in anxiety and moves towards peace. Zvavahera makes a point of always ending her painting series with a “victory painting”, to finish the work on a positive note after processing the difficult emotions that she may experience in her dreams, during the process of painting.
The in-between paintings in each series are, therefore, an act of emotional and spiritual wrestling. In the exhibition catalogue, Tandazani Dhlakama speaks of this in terms both of “wrestling through prayer and spiritual warfare” and of wrestling with materials through her innovative combination of printing and painting, together with her brushstrokes, which, though not necessarily violent, indicate “a tension, a wrestling”.
In the same catalogue conversation, Sinazo Chiya notes that this means that Zvavahera is “both in the present with the canvas but also in another realm. So, the discrepancy between waking life and sleeping life narrows as she’s working. It’s almost as though she is praying on/through the canvas. It’s an embodied action that allows her to connect to the negative messages and spirits animated in sleep by her dream: her demons, so to speak.”
While the activity and impact of prayer may be an unusual subject for contemporary art, Zvavahera’s work and themes are part of a movement both within Zimbabwe and wider. Her work first came to wider prominence at the Venice Biennale in 2013, where she was included in the exhibition “Dudziro: Interrogating the Visions of Religious Beliefs”, which used visions of the diverse religious beliefs in Zimbabwe as a means of describing Zimbabwean experience and stories through the eyes and minds of the artists involved. In a separate conversation about Zvavahera’s work, the artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti commented that “Zimbabweans are overtly religious and overtly Christian,” a reality that shows itself in much of the work produced by Zimbabwean artists.
Courtesy of Stevenson and David Zwirner © the artistPortia Zvavahera, His Presence (2013), oil-based printing ink on paper
Such interests, themes, and, even, commitments are not, however, limited to Zimbabwe, as Zvavahera’s work stands with that of artists such as Louis Carreon, Lakwena Maciver, Egbert Modderman, Nengi Omuku, and Genesis Tramaine, among others, who explore similar themes. The responses to the work of such artists demonstrates that engaging directly with and/or from a position of commitment to a religious belief need no longer be a limiting factor for artists within the mainstream art world.
The unique stylings of Zvavahera’s patterned and intensely coloured paintings enable them to weave together dreams, fantasies, and the spiritual traditions that she grew up with. A further technique that is seen in many of the artworks on display at Kettle’s Yard and also relates to prayer is to leave large parts of the canvas blank, in stark contrast to the bold, rich colours of the rest of her paintings. These blank spaces are intentionally left so that they can be filled by a “higher power”. Zvavahera feels that she is not always in complete control of everything in work or life; so these spaces are left clear, as a means of asking God to guide her way and help her to finish the work.
“Portia Zvavahera: Zvakazarurwa” runs at Kettle’s Yard, Castle Street, Cambridge, until 16 February. Phone 01223 748 100. www.kettlesyard.cam.ac.uk