Kuenda Mberi “Moving On”

Move On. Seguir adelante.

Intuition, that inner voice capable of perceiving the world unconsciously through the accumulation of knowledge and experience, runs through the work of Virginia Chihota (Zimbabwe, 1983).

In her work, an overwhelming force comes into tension with the need to find refuge. A safe space for art, protected as if it was inside a womb -an organ that tends to be associated with fertility in African art and that Virginia Chihota often draws – where the artist voluntarily isolates herself in order to name the unnamable, question the material conditions necessary for artistic production, explore her spirituality and search for her identity, as an African woman and a woman artist. Her work, deeply introspective, connects with her personal, collective and ancestral memory, where the body -always in transformation- occupies a central place.

In this continuous dialogue with herself, the artist uses silkscreen printing, drawing and painting in a game of textures and different layers with which she superimposes past, present and future. A multidimensional tale in which life and death intertwine in the face of a repetition of abstract gestures and ghostly presences that aspire to reveal the hidden and recall the indelible.

Kuenda Mberi. Moving On is a catharsis following the different migratory experiences that over the last decade have led the artist to reside in different countries such as Libya, Tunisia, Austria, Ethiopia and the USA; an expression of her experiences linked to displacement, isolation and the permanent need for reconstruction in the face of new realities and contexts, which is both a daily struggle and the possibility of a continuous rebirth as a woman and an artist.

In the series Enough Now, Zvakwana Manje (2023-24), her first foray into oil painting, she uses the materials at her disposal – a setback associated with her last change of residence prevented her from having her usual silkscreen printing equipment – in a desperate act where a series of figures seem to float, unable to find anchorage or take control. The birth reveals a body detached from itself, pushed by hidden forces. This unknown dimension seems to operate from the margins, establishing a continuous dialogue with what is happening inside. It is the artist herself who again and again submits herself to scrutiny, who has no choice but to be reborn and begin again.

I Raise My Hands, Ndosimudza maoko munguva dzese (2014-24) represents a long-desired encounter with a series of sketches that, again because of a change of address, become sacred objects that return to her to reactivate her creative process.

Chihota’s artistic practice thus becomes a key that opens the doors to self-knowledge, exploring complex aspects of her being and her life in community where the traditions of African art resonate, in which individuality and collectivity coexist.

It is no coincidence that Kuenda Mberi. Moving On [Seguir Adelante] is the inaugural project of Travesía Cuatro’s new space; it marks the beginning of an exciting new phase and expresses the desire to activate a new space-time from which to continue investigating, showing and accompanying the work of artists who build and give rise to new cultural, social and artistic imaginaries.

Virginia Chihota stresses the healing power of art and our ability to be reborn as individuals and as a society; in short, she invites us to move forward, to question and reposition ourselves in the face of the past, to leave behind what does not work and, perhaps, to recover some hope.

– Mónica Carroquino