ART CITIES: Los Angeles-Portia Zvavahera

Portia Zvavahera’s vast canvases contain a world of dreamscapes heavy with burdens of our futures and unresolved pasts. The women depicted in her paintings, however, are not always in despair. Often they appear to be tenderly holding spaces for each other; there is no pain without comfort. Ever present in Zvavahera’s work are the entangled worlds of the spiritual and the ancestral, worlds that are protective, demanding, and at times even petty.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: David Zwirner Gallery Archive

The exhibition “Zvibereko zvemweya wangu” features a series of new works that continues to develop Portia Zvavahera’s experiments with different painting processes and subject matter by joining her carefully charted dream worlds with her lived experience and daily rituals. Zvavahera expands her practice with familiar motifs and narratives; her works are populated by symbolic creatures that become powerful conduits for the interpretation of spiritual visions and the contemplation of our earthly existence.

In her paintings, Zvavahera gives form to emotions beyond the domains of everyday life and thought. Her vivid imagery is rooted in the cornerstones of our earthly existence—life and death, pain and pleasure, isolation and connection, and love and loss. These deeply personal visions are realized through layers of vibrant color and ornate, veil-like patterns that the artist builds up into palimpsestic surfaces through a combination of expressive brushwork and elaborate printmaking techniques. Zvavahera’s compositions draw on particular traditions of figuration in past and present Zimbabwe, first expressed in the work of Thomas Mukarobgwa in the 1960s, while also pointing to postwar artistic practices that probe the nature of the human condition.

Zvavahera’s latest exhibition powerfully continues this exploration of the human condition. Themes of love, loss, fear, family, and protection recur throughout this new series of paintings, mirroring her broader practice. The exhibition title “Zvibereko zvemweya wangu” loosely translates from Shona* as the “fruits of my soul,” aptly describing the intense creative output behind these works. These monumental paintings are among her most energetic to date, deeply inspired by her love for family and, particularly, the passing of her late grandmother. Here, Zvavahera resumes her study of dreamscapes, delving into subject matter that women, especially mothers, have experienced across time. She strips away the protective veneer of modern society, exposing core emotions that relate to the profundity of life and death. Incorporating new motifs like vessels, trees, water lilies, and snakes, Zvavahera’s paintings guide viewers on journeys, telling abstracted stories about the strength within the maternal and matriarchal world, where reality and imagination merge.

Shona* is the artist’s native language, which she speaks at home; titles in Shona are provided with a translation only when Zvavahera feels that the English words suffice. Experimenting with batik and block printing, oil sticks, and acrylic paints, Zvavahera’s canvases are applied with layers, and then, like dreams, unfold into camouflaged compositions rich in symbolism and psychological depth. Within the exhibition, Zvavahera portrays small figures, children unbound by the canvas and surrounded by protecting arms and feathered veils painted with leaves, using a traditional wax-resist batik method, in works such as “Kubuditswa muhari” (2025). Others like “Kubudiswa (redeemed)” (2025) show a series of bowing figures—a community seemingly praying as a form of collective strength, demonstrating their power in numbers.

* Shona is a major Bantu language spoken by over 14 million people, primarily in Zimbabwe where it’s an official language, and also in Mozambique, Zambia, and Botswana, known for its tonal system and rich dialects like Karanga, Zezuru, and Manyika, unified in the 20th century and used in education and daily life, forming a key part of Shona cultural identity

Photo: Portia Zvavahera, Kubudiswa (redeemed), 2025, Oil based printing ink and oil bar on linen, 105 3/8 x 165 1/4 inches (267.7 x 419.6 cm), Framed: 106 5/8 x 166 3/8 inches (270.7 x 422.6 cm), Signed and dated recto, © Portia Zvavahera, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner Gallery 

Info: David Zwirner Gallery, 606 N Western Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Duration: 14/11/2025-7/2/2026, Days & Hours: Tue=Sat 10:00-18:00, www.davidzwirner.com/