Portia Zvavahera was born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1985 where she still lives and works. She studied at the BAT Visual Arts studio in the mid-200s and graduated with a Visual Arts qualification. Her work has been exhibited at the Zimbabwe Pavilion; Stevenson Cape Town and Johannesburg; and the Marc Foxx. In 2010 she held a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, while in 2013 she represented Zimbabwe at the Venice Biennale under Raphael Chikukwa’s exhibition Dudziro: Interrogating the Visions of Religions Beliefs.
Zvavahera has exhibited her work at the Stevenson Cape Town and Johannesburg for six years in a row. Her journey with the gallery began in 2014 when she exhibited her paintings titled Mavambo Erwendo which translates to Beginning of a Profound Journey. Her work shows a deep understanding of colour and the language of Expressionism – which is how the artists depicts the subjective emotions that objects and events arouse in a person. Zvavahera is inspired by her own life and dreams and the recurring themes in her work are her concerns around subjects such as marriage, birth and social injustice. Having grown up in a Zimbabwe that practised both Christianity and indigenous African religions, the artist’s work shows her interest in how elements of both are brought together to make one meaning.
Zvaharera’s fist exhibition outside of Africa was at the Marc Foxx in Los Angeles under the exhibition titled I’m With You. For this exhibition her work portrayed indigenous and imported printmaking and her paintings showed quite a sophisticated paint and ink layering proving this to have been a process that needed patience and precision. The artist’s work is very personal, being a woman herself, when she tackles issues such as women’s roles, bodies and issues this tends to reflect what she has seen to be women’s roles, what she has seen women’s bodies to symbolise as well as her own take on women’s issues.
She is a recipient of the 10th Tollman Award for the Visual Arts (2013) and this is an annual award presented to the youngest visual artist whose work has been of great recognition but is in need of help to get their work onto greater platforms. A year later she also won the FNB Art Prize at the Joburg Art Fair.
