Shamilla Aasha

Born 1977 Hwange, Zimbabwe
Lives and works in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

Shamilla Aasha is a practicing artist and teacher of art and design. After many years of working in painting and mixed media, in 2018 Aasha re-engage with her love of textiles through exploration of her multi-cultural background as a Shona and Indian woman living in Matabeleland region of Zimbabwe. Developing complex works addressing issues related to merging cultures and traditional practices and how they influence identity, spirituality and social status for herself and other women in her community. 
 
Aasha’s works defy attempts at categorisation, incorporating weaving, tapestry as well as engaging with the idea and history of painting. They emerge as soft sculptures, wall-hangings made from found objects as well abstract embroideries. She describes them as sacred objects, a fitting metaphor for her narratives. This metaphor is further expanded on, as she uses sewing patterns, fabric and stitching. This process allows her to create new patterns from the old and with each layer creating a palmistry language. 

Shamilla has participated in numerous exhibitions locally regionally and internationally. She is currently part of an ongoing, regional collaborative project, which is interrogating the participation of women in land redistribution in Southern Africa.

​In addition to artistic practice, Shamilla also continues to nurture creativity minds through her trust-Asha Children’s Trust, an organisation devoted to creating safe spaces for young creatives grow and thrive outside the formal education sector.

Key Exhibitions and Career Highlights
2024: Messe Messe 2024 (group exhibition), First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2024: To Those Who Came Before Me, First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2024: RMB Latitudes Art Fair, First Floor Gallery Harare, Johannesburg, South Africa
2023: Artissima, First Floor Gallery Harare, Turin, Italy
2023: Messe Messe (Group Exhibition), First Floor Gallery Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
2023: Tomorrows/Today (solo), Investec Cape Town Art Fair, First Floor Gallery Harare, Cape Town, South Africa
2022: Artissima, First Floor Gallery Harare, Turin, Italy

Simon Back

Born 1966, Harare, Zimbabwe
Lives and works in Mauritius

Simon Back was born in Harare and lived in Zimbabwe for most of his youth. In 1983, at the age of 17 he became a student of Helen Lieros the founder of Gallery Delta and renowned painting teacher. He then went on to study fine art in Cape Town, majoring in Print Making, before returning to Zimbabwe to teach and paint. It was around this time that he exhibited frequently at Gallery Delta and participated yearly in the National Heritage Exhibitions at the National Gallery. In 1996 he moved to Mauritius with his family continuing to paint and teach while exhibiting locally and internationally. Back’s influences have been varied, ranging from classical African art to the Abstract and Neo-Expressionists of the 1950’s and 60’s. His process of painting involves an interaction between the compulsive act of mark making within an often more constructed space.

Key Exhibitions and Career Highlights
2025: Adam 2.0, First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
​2023: Paper Weight (Group Exhibition), First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2021: Art Laguna Prize - International Art Competition , Venice - 15th Edition
2020:  Beyond Before’ - Solo exhibition, Matter Gallery, Toronto, Canada
2019: ‘Crossing Boundaries’ - Gallery Delta - Group show - Zimbabwe
2019:  ‘Conversations’ - Group show organised by L’Institute Francais de Maurice and FRAC de la Reunion at Musée d’Histoire Naturelle - Port Louis.
2018: Participation’10 Ans’ Exhibition, Imaaya Gallery, Mauritius

Miriro Mwandiambira

Born in 1994, Harare, Zimbabwe. Lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Having graduated from the National Gallery of Zimbabwe Visual Art Studio, 2014 in painting, Miriro immediately began experimenting with other media developing sculptural, installation and performance oriented projects. At the core of Mwandiambira’s practice is her commitment to being a voice of women in the contemporary social and cultural context of urban Zimbabwe, a tense and urgent mix of global pop culture, with strong traditional roots and beliefs. At the same time, Mwandiambira, asserts the domain of woman’s work and creativity into the space of art, in a way that does not entertain a compromise with or deference to the male dominated mediums and fields like painting and sculpture. Sewing, fashion, hair design and elements of self-decoration are legitimized and the divide between public and private domains is disrupted. In the past few years Miriro’s work has attracted the attention of both international curators and collectors, with a strong performance and installation practice, which has secured her the place at the prestigious RAW Academy in Dakar, Senegal in 2018.

Key Exhibitions and Career Highlights
2025: She Remembered Who She Was, First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2024: Messe Messe 2024 (group exhibition), First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2023: ​Paper Weight (Group Exhibition), First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2022: Making Space (online)(Aasha, Teede, Webber, Mutema, Mwandiambira, Mushate, Tauzeni)​
2021: Vacancy [Zanele Mutema/Miriro Mwandiambira], First Floor Gallery Vic Falls, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
2020: Sugar Embodiment, Carré D’Art Musée, Nîme, France

Wycliffe Mundopa

Born 1987 in Rusape, Zimbabwe.
Lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe

Wycliffe Mundopa is Zimbabwe’s leading painter and a passionate advocate for the lives of society’s most vulnerable, whose needs and dreams are often swept under the carpet by the powers that be. The pathos and pageantry of his works, also becomes an opportunity to see how painfully and vibrantly women’s lives reflect the conflicts of tradition and change of life in contemporary life in Zimbabwe. And avid student of the history of painting, Mundopa makes an urgent case for importance of presenting life of his country and his contemporaries with the same pathos and grandeur as the Dutch masters like Rubens and Rembrandt while situating himself as an heir to the grand tradition, Europeans jealously protect. For him, the drama of the lives of the ordinary people of Harare is of truly historic significance and should be honoured as such. More than that at a time when there is a renewed drive for exoticisation and selfexoticisation in African art, Wycliffe Mundopa pushes back with harsh honesty and brutal beauty of his figures.

Mundopa’s talent has attracted both critical attention and collector acclaim internationally since his early twenties with works in collections as far and wide as Norway, Thailand, Cameroon, USA, Hong Kong, Nigeria, France, Israel Australia, Kenya, Netherlands as well as South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Key Exhibitions and Career Highlights
2025: Ibwe Rakaraswa ne Muvaki, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe
2024: Mbare Opera, Southern Guild Gallery, Los Angeles, USA​
2023: Frieze London, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, Los Angeles, USA​
2023: Pachipamwe (We Meet Again), Southern Guild Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2022: Echo curated by Serubiri Moses, Jenkins Johnson Projects, New York, USA
2021: FNB Art Prize winner

Pebofatso Mokoena

​Born 1993, Ekurhuleni, South Africa. Lives and works, Johannesburg, South Africa
​
Mokoena holds a BA Honours in Fine Art (with distinction)from Wits University and is completing a Master of Arts in Fine Arts at Witwatersrand University. In 2014, He completed his N.Dip (Visual Art) at the University of Johannesburg and subsequently, apart from working towards his BTech qualification, Pebofatso taught drawing and presentation at the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, at UJ. Emerging from early practice in printmaking, Mokoena’s painting practice is formally underscored by precise mark making and division of space, while exploring ideas around micro and macro scales of politics, architecture and the environment.

Pebofatso’s work has received early recognition and support, locally and internationally. Mokoena has held multiple solo exhibitions including; Neoclassical Taste Matrix and Space Dot Conundrums in Harare, Zimbabwe, The Pebofatso Experience at HZRD and Inside Jobs at the Bag Factory as well as curated exhibitions including Diptych; Disclosure at SMAC; Fresh Produce 2014, Inner Nature, Fortunes Remixed, and South African Voices: A New Generation of Printmakers in Washington DC and is in the Springs Art Library Collection, the South African Embassy Art Collection (in Washington, D.C.), and the JP Morgan Global Collection amongst other private collections.

Exhibitions
2025: Mega Art Fair (with Troy Makaza), First Floor Gallery Harare, Milan, Italy
​2025: Pronounced Freedom (group exhibition), Polokwane Art Museum, Polokwane, South Africa​​
2024: Messe Messe 2024 (group exhibition), First Floor Gallery Harare, Harare, Zimbabwe
2024: Artissima, First Floor Gallery Harare, Turin, Italy​
2024: FNB Art Joburg, First Floor Gallery Harare, Johannesburg, South Africa
2024: RMB Latitudes Art Fair, First Floor Gallery Harare, Johannesburg, South Africa