Kudzanai-Violet Hwami's '15,952km' at Gasworks Explores Diaspora and Zimbabwean Histories

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, a London-based Zimbabwean-born painter, held her first solo institutional exhibition at Gasworks in London from 19 September to 15 December 2019. Titled '(15,952km) via Trans-Sahara Hwy N1', the show reimagined Zimbabwe through paintings that blend family archives, colonial records, and digital images. The title references the distance between Kwekwe (Zimbabwe), Cape Town (South Africa), and the London gallery, reflecting the artist's personal trajectory and broader migration patterns. The exhibition featured works such as 'Sitting by Sekuru's Grave' (2019), 'Medicine Man' (2019), 'Shona Boy with Dove' (2019), 'Dreamcatcher' (2019), and 'Bira' (2019), alongside a series of small canvases titled 'Speaking in Tongues' (2019). A performance by poet Belinda Zhawi on 7 November 2019 accompanied the show, using sound to mirror Hwami's collage-based painting process. The works engage with spiritual encounters, family histories, and national narratives, questioning the boundaries of self and the construction of home across temporal and spatial divides. Hwami's practice incorporates Afrofuturist ideas of plastic time, weaving together multiple pasts, futures, and dreams.