Portia Zvavahera: I Can Feel It in My Eyes

STEVENSON presents Portia Zvavahera's third solo exhibition with the gallery, I Can Feel It in My Eyes. In I Can Feel It in My Eyes, Portia Zvavahera exhibits several new large-format paintings depicting young lovers in ecstatic embrace amongst the lush gardens of Harare's Central Park. Screened by gigantic flowers that protect and seclude them in their private love, the couples seem lost in their feelings, oblivious to the gaze of the outside world. Like secret pictures that lie just beyond the visible, these scenes communicate an awareness of a deeply felt spiritual dimension drawn from the realm of love. Zvavahera was born in 1985 in Juru, Zimbabwe, and lives in Harare. She studied at the BAT Visual Arts Studio under the guidance of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, and obtained a first-class Diploma in Visual Arts from Harare Polytechnic (2006). Recent group exhibitions are African Odysseys at Le Brass, Brussels, and Liberated Subjects: Present Tense at Foundation De 11 Lijnen, Belgium (both 2015). Solo exhibitions have taken place at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, in 2010, and at Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg, in 2014. The gallery held a solo presentation of her work at Frieze New York 2015. In 2014 she won the FNB Art Prize, awarded at the Joburg Art Fair, and in 2103 she was the recipient of the 10th Tollman Award for the Visual Arts. Also in 2013 Zvavahera represented Zimbabwe at the 55th Venice Biennale as part of the exhibition Dudziro: Interrogating the Visions of Religious Beliefs. The exhibition opens on Thursday 23 July, from 6 to 8pm http://stevenson.info