14 January 2022- Fadzai Muchemwa has been appointed the Curator for Contemporary Art of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe effective 11 January 2022. This new position has been created in order to streamline the Gallery’s Curatorial activities across its three branches, and continuously expanding network. The Curator will be assisted by two Assistant Curators; whom are located in Bulawayo and from the first of March, Mutare.
Muchemwa was a researcher with the Arts of Africa and Global Souths program in the Fine Art Deprtment at Rhodes University, writer and curator operating between Grahamstown, South Africa, and Harare, Zimbabwe. Her research explores notions of care in artistic practice, national archival records, social justice, histories of cities, topographies of knowledge production, and sites of transition.
She formerly served as Curator for Education and Public Programming at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe from 2017-2020, and Assistant Curator from 2016-2017, where she co-curated Moulding a Nation: The History of the Ceramics Collection of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (2018–2019), Dis(colour)ed Margins (2017), Culture in Communities (2016), and Jazzified: Expressions of Protest (2016). In addition, she curated The Unseen: Creatures of Myth and Legend, an exhibition of artworks by Isaac Kalambata at the Lusaka National Museum in 2018. As visiting curator at the Bag Factory in Johannesburg in 2019, she produced the publication Curating Johannesburg: rest.less, under siege/in transition.
“As the Executive Director, I welcome Fadzai to the National Gallery of Zimbabwe family and it is my hope that she can add value to our institution, both locally and globally” said Raphael Chikukwa. “Her arrival launches a new chapter in Zimbabwean Art sector.”
Muchemwa is a 2017 fellow of the International Training Programme at the British Museum. She is a collaborator for Independent Curators International and the Zimbabwe Pavilion at the International Art Exhibition in Venice. She is a founding member of the Practice Theory Collective
