Troy Makaza, Untwisting the Fantasy
Jérôme Poggi is pleased to announce its new collaboration with Troy Makaza (b. 1994) who lives and works in Harare (Zimbabwe).
From March 11th to April 15th, the gallery is dedicating to this emerging, but already known artist, his first solo exhibition in France. Titled Untwisting The Fantasy, the exhibition gathers a new body of works specially produced for the gallery. This exhibition is organized in partnership with First Floor Gallery in Harare.
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Born and living in Harare, Troy Makaza is one of the most unique Zimbabwean voices of the past decade. He graduated from the National Gallery School of Visual Art and Design (NGSVAD), where he studied painting and sculpture and was supported by renowned artists such as Wycliffe Mundopa, Moffat Takadiwa and Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude.
To merge his love of painting and sculpture, he invented his own medium, creating seductive, glossy, tactile and surrealist wall works made of silicone infused with pigment, a material that can be cast, painted, but also woven and tied. Resonating with traditional modes such as weaving and tapestry, Makaza’s works explore what the African and specifically Zimbabwean contemporary can be today : a paradigm both internationally appealing and locally compelling.
Over the past eight years, Troy Makaza’s work has gradually become a way for him to express himself, both viscerally and philosophically, on the challenges he faces as a young Zimbabwean concerned with the political life of his country and its impact on the daily lives of its citizens, but also as a millennial engaged in a globalized society.
Troy Makaza’s work defies any formal categorization and thus conceptualizes and “maps” a reconciliation of divergent cultural, historical, and political ideologies in Zimbabwe and around the world. Makaza’s work remains playful and light-hearted, subtly referring to popular visual culture, traditional Zimbabwean symbolism, local food and art history to create synthetic agglomerations where colors, shapes and textures play an aesthetic and symbolic role.
Now one of the leading figures on the emerging scene in South Africa and Zimbabwe, Troy Makaza’s reputation on the international scene keeps growing. He won the 2019 Investec Cape Town Art Fair Tomorrows/Today Award and his work has been exhibited in London, Milan, Al Maaden Museum of Contemporary African Art in Marrakech, Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium in Norway, Evergold Projects in San Franscisco, and in fair presentations at Art Basel Miami Beach, Paris+ by Art Basel, Frieze no.9 Cork Street, Art Joburg and ARCOmadrid.
