Nothando Chiwanga
She is a Zimbabwean visual artist and photographer work interrogates memory, identity, and the lived experiences of Black women. She uses photography, performance, and installation, often using her own body as a tool of expression and resistance. A graduate of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe School of Visual Arts and Design, her practice is rooted in personal and communal histories. Chiwanga has exhibited internationally, including in Nigeria, China, and the U.S., and continues to explore decolonial narratives through material culture and embodied storytelling.
She won first prize in the Tavatose Art Competition (2013) and later participated in workshops led by John Kotze (Realism), Julius Mushambadope (Art Ethics), and Sithembile Msezane (Performance Art) .Her work, including the celebrated piece “Immortal”, featured in the 2023 We Should All Be Human exhibition at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, challenges traditional gender roles through symbolic imagery that merges miner helmets with reed baskets . Chiwanga continues to expand how photography and performance can archive marginalized stories and reclaim feminine agency in postcolonial visual culture.
She has exhibited in major group shows such as New Signatures and Green Shoots at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, The Will Sun Rise and Shine Post COVID‑19 (2021), Notes for Tomorrow (traveling internationally), Young Contemporaries 2022 in Lagos—and the Madzimbawe Group Show at Akka Project Dubai in 2022 . Chiwanga also completed residencies at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (2020) ,Mbare art space (2024) ,Resiliart accelarator Unesco in Harare( 2022 )Rele Arts Foundation, Lagos (2022) She was awarded with Video Zimbabwe visual artist Award at National Gallery of Zimbabwe in 2023.
Her work emerges from personal experience and community archives. Through formal portraiture staged in evocative environments often public or domestic .Chiwanga presents the Black female body as a site of resistance, cultural knowledge, and reclamation. She challenges colonial aesthetics and patriarchal histories by foregrounding nuanced, everyday rituals: cooking, mourning, dressing, and movement .
In Queen of the Underground, part of her If These Walls Could Talk exhibition, she reimagines the hidden labor and healing roles of Zimbabwean women in beerhall spaces. Her practice is immersive, combining staged photography, live ritual-performance, and sculpted costume to activate memory and prompt social dialogue My work proposes visual art as embodied research and public archive making visible untold stories and reasserting African women’s agency in modern history.
Zvepano (National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, Nov 2022)
MaDzimbahwe Group Show (AKKA Project, Dubai – Expo 2020
If These Walls Could Talk (Mbare Art Space, Harare, 2024)
Notes for Tomorrow Catalogue (Independent Curators International)
MUD Journal Q&A: “Self Portrait: Nothando Chiwanga”
Brown Art Review: “We Should All Be Human: An All‑Female Art Exhibit in Zimbabwe”
World Press Photo instagram feature 2023
Rele Arts Foundation Young Contemporaries Residency (Lagos, 2022).
1‑54 Contemporary African Art Fair (New York edition)
Bakashimika international photography festival 2025
Art critics and platforms such as Africa Palette emphasize Chiwanga’s focus on “domesticated women”
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