Kudzanai Chiurai

In his pointed, theatrical multimedia compositions, Kudzanai Chiurai tackles government corruption, xenophobia, displacement, inequality, and other pressing issues for his generation of southern Africans. Chiurai’s visceral and expressionistic paintings, mixed-media works, photography, and videos reflect an interplay between history and modernity, colonialism and independence. They also consider the psychological experience of living in modern African metropolises. Chiurai’s unapologetic expressionism has occasionally gotten him in trouble—in 2008, he fled from his home country of Zimbabwe after he made murals critical of the government and was threatened with arrest. The artist has exhibited in Cape Town, New York, Harare, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Johannesburg. His work belongs in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Pérez Art Museum Miami, and Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. Chiurai was the first Black artist to receive a BFA from the University of Pretoria in South Africa.