Wycliffe Mundopa: Pachipamwe (We Meet Again)

Southern Guild, in collaboration with First Floor Gallery Harare, is proud to present Pachipamwe (We Meet Again), a solo exhibition of figurative oil paintings by Zimbabwean artist Wycliffe Mundopa. The exhibition of large-scale canvases bear visceral witness to the complex lives of Zimbabwe’s women and children. The collection will be on view at the gallery from 9 February to 20 April 2023.

For more than 15 years, Mundopa has harnessed his role as an artist to give visibility and voice to the unseen and unheard. The painter’s work is a response to life as he observes and experiences it. Each of his grand compositions, saturated in their carnivalesque colour and brimming with impassioned gesture, canonises the stories of Harare’s women. Believing in the power of truth-seeing and the drama and beauty of the ordinary, Mundopa’s paintings elevate the daily ongoings of his people toward historic significance.

Lurid hues, vibrant pattern, rich allegory and animal symbolism have come to define a potent visual language for the artist. The allegorical mingles with the mundane as a vividly spotted hyena is carried to the local market, fruit-sellers sit streetside in striped stockings and circus garb, a woman’s face bears the distinct snout of a pig. These symbols are visualisations of vernacular expressions. Encoded within each metaphor is commentary referring to the country’s broader societal fabric, and its fluctuating moral codes. The crowding of each of the rendered street scenes creates a shifting sense of perspective as multiple focal points fiercely compete for the eye’s attention. The viewer is initially seduced and overwhelmed by the sumptuous pageantry of the work, but a closer viewing challenges us to engage with the harsher realities that Mundopa’s world is builtupon. This witnessing stands beyond literal documentation; the artist mythologises the everyday with both violence and empathy.

Drawing from the tradition of the Old Dutch Masters, Mundopa presents a multi-dimensional image of his countrywomen. These audacious figures – breadwinners, sex workers, mothers and muses – renounce historically reductive modes of representation. His women are dynamic, desirous, joyous and resilient in the face of social circumstances that do not often lend themselves to a life of power. The fullness of this portrayal begs us to see both the pain and vibrancy of these women’s lives.

Valerie Kabov, co-founder of First Floor Gallery, shares this: “Using the dichotomies of anger in beauty and beauty in the pain, Mundopa enables us to emerge from the dichotomy of looking and seeing. Not only do his mythologised but dramatically real subjects compel you to see them, they challenge you to question the way you look, moving between didactic and heroic as though that was a natural oscillation.” Here, the artist utilises a painterly tradition often guarded by the West, to revel in the contemporary complexities of African life.

For Mundopa, the personal is always political. Born in the town of Rusape in north-eastern Zimbabwe, the painter’s practice developed amidst the country’s socio-economic and political upheaval. In the early 2000s, following a prolonged and devastating period of hyperinflation, at a juncture when other artists left the country to seek opportunity elsewhere, he made the choice to remain. The decision was weighted with both personal sacrifice and a life-affirming sense of responsibility. Mundopa is now hailed as one of Zimbabwe’s most recognised and successful contemporary artists.

The exhibition proudly marks the first collaborative project between Southern Guild and First Floor Gallery Harare, which was founded in 2009 by Kabov, an art critic and art advocate, and Marcus Gora, a cultural promoter. Against the odds, in an embattled environment with little to no arts infrastructure, First Floor has grown into an internationally respected contemporary arts space. The gallery is committed to fostering the development of local artists, promoting intercultural dialogue, and bolstering education in the broader cultural sphere.

Born 1987 in Rusape, Zimbabwe, Wycliffe Mundopa graduated from the National Gallery of Zimbabwe Visual Arts Studios in 2007 with a National Certificate in Fine Art. A passionate advocate for the lives of society’s most vulnerable, his large-scale works give exalted platform to Zimbabwe’s women and children.

Mundopa makes an urgent case for importance of presenting life of his country and his contemporaries with the same pathos and grandeur as the Dutch masters while situating himself as an heir to the grand tradition.

Since joining First Floor in 2009, Mundopa has held multiple solo presentations of his work at the gallery and attracted international attention from important institutions, collectors and critics. His 2020 solo exhibition at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in London was followed by his winning South Africa’s FNB Art Prize in 2021. He has participated widely in group shows in the UK, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, Norway, the US, Israel, Australia and Kenya.