Troy Makaza
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. Troy Maakaza will be a part of the group that will represent Zimbabwe at the next Biennale di Venezia in April 2024.
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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.
Works
“My subject matter is equally fluid, moving between abstraction and figuration, because neither category is in fact pure and the formality of these definitions don’t make sense to me.”
News & Press
Exhibitions at the Gallery
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The First Stone
October 13 - December 2, 2023
Troy Makaza, Untwisting the Fantasy
March 11 - April 15, 2023
Ecce Homo
02 Jul. – 13 Aug. 2022
