Zimbabwean artist Tamary Kudita explores the representation of African identity through photography. His portraits with a sophisticated aesthetic, loaded with symbolic references, bring to life a world between reality and imagination through a visual language that borrows from both Africa and the West.
Duality is at the heart of Tamary Kudita’s identity, both a descendant of the Shona people of Zimbabwe and a white ancestor, an Anglo-Boer war commissioner. This double heritage nourishes his reflection on the shadow that the colonial past casts on the identity and contemporary life of Zimbabweans. It also profoundly marks the visual language that she has developed since her beginnings.
African Victorian, his first series, finds its origins in Rembrandt’s painting “Saskia en Flora”, representing the painter’s wife as the goddess Flora. By recontextualizing the subject in Africa, the artist questions “the image of black women in Western Art and what it means to place an African woman in the field of art history.”
To design the dresses worn by the models, Tamary Kudita worked with designer Angeline Dlamini around the idea of introducing a Victorian silhouette into the African context. The opulent clothing born from this collaboration, which appropriates a Western visual canon by recontextualizing it using textiles belonging to African culture, gives hyper-visibility to invisible bodies. They convey an image of the assertive and independent African woman, anchored in her cultural roots.
The artist considers herself “a visual activist who uses the camera as a tool” to combat conventional and stereotypical representations of black people, particularly from colonial photography. His portraits pay tribute to the creativity and resilience of the Zimbabwean people, highlighting stories forgotten, erased or made invisible by the official narrative.
Tamary Kudita refines her portraits down to the smallest detail, seeking to translate the character of her characters through each of the elements that enter into her composition: the clothing and hairstyles of her models, the objects that surround them and, in the case of outdoor shots, choice of environment. All of these “signifiers” reinforce the narrative aspect of his images and give them a strong symbolic value.
-His most recent series, Birds of Paradise, continues this exploration. Designed as a tribute to the men and women of Zimbabwe, these portraits of ordinary people honor their stories and seek to give them a voice through art.
Tamary Kudita
Tamary Kudita, born in 1994 in Zimbabwe, graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts (University of Cape Town) in 2017. Winner of the Open Photographer of the Year 2021 prize at the Sony World Photography Awards, she exhibits internationally (Art Basel Miami, Royal Photographic Society) and appears in prestigious collections such as that of the Fitchburg Art Museum, attracting the attention of international media.
More information:
Biography, video interview and portfolio of Tamary Kudita on the Artistics gallery website.
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