H Gallery is very pleased to announce a groundbreaking show of contemporary art from Zimbabwe’s capital city, Harare.

In the shadows beyond the international political headlines about Zimbabwe, art and culture continues to thrive. Harare’s young artists are enmeshed in the life and toil of their city. They share the realities of their compatriots and amid the struggles for daily bread, keeping families together and urban frictions these artists create music, color and poetry.

The works of Brian Banda, Zacharaha Magasa, Wycliff Mundopa, Terence Musekiwa and Moffatt Takadiwa are odes to the city they love as each tease out rhythmic, urbane and deeply human polyphonies from everyday life and its objects. Mundopa and Banda focus on the lives of women: Mundopa creates beautiful mono-prints, drawings, and collages while Banda elevates discarded cookware into dignified and emotive sculptures. Takadiwa distils the poverty and privations of life in contemporary Zimbabwe with surprising combinations of functional objects. And Magasa captures both a love of music and the spirit of Harare with paintings made from the multi-colour remnants of plastic containers which are distinctly local. Musekiwa brings traditional Zimbabwean stone carving into the contemporary world, blending it with issues of labour and home-life.

 Valerie Kabov is an international curator, educator and art critic based between France and Australia. She co-founded the artist-run First Floor Gallery in Harare and is completing a PhD at the University of Paris 1, Sorbonne, in France on the role of cultural policy and economics in developing audiences for emerging contemporary art around the world.