Portia Zvavahera

Portia Zvavahera’s ethereal paintings are inspired by dreams, mysticism, and the figurative painting tradition of Zimbabwe. She studied at the BAT Visual Arts Studio, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, and earned her degree in fine arts from Harare Polytechnic in 2006. Zvavahera held a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Harare in 2010 and was included among the five artists representing Zimbabwe at the 2013 Venice Biennale. In 2020, her painting Arising from the Unknown (2019) sold at Phillips London for $212,383—nearly three times the work’s high estimate—and she has since presented her work at David Zwirner in London and New York. In Zvavahera’s paintings, vibrant color and expressive brushwork give way to fantastic figures that conjure spiritual or transcendental associations.