Kudzanai-Violet Hwami

Born in Gutu, Zimbabwe in 1993, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami currently lives and works in the UK.

In 2016, the same year she graduated from Wimbledon College of Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, she was awarded the Clyde & Co. Award and the Young Achiever of the Year Award at the Zimbabwean International Women’s Awards, as well as being shortlisted for Bloomberg New Contemporaries. In 2019, Hwami presented work at the 58th Venice Biennale as part of the Zimbabwe Pavilion, the youngest artist to participate in the Biennale. In 2022 she returned to the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia as part of The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani.

Hwami's first institutional solo exhibition, (15,952km) via Trans – Sahara Hwy N1, was held at Gasworks, London, in 2019. Recent institutional exhibitions include a solo presentation at Kunsthaus Pasquart, Switzerland, which was on view until 12 June 2022.

Other group exhibitions include Corps et Âmes (Body and Soul), Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection, Paris, France (2025); The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA (2024); Indigo Waves & Other Stories: Re-navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora at Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany (2023); Reframed: The Woman at the Window at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK (2022); When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting, curated by Koyo Kouoh, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa (2022), travelling to Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2024) and Centre for Fine Arts, Bozar, Brussels (2025); Ubuntu, a lucid dream, curated by Mari-Ann Yemsi, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2021–2022); Mixing it Up: Painting in the UK, curated by Ralph Rugoff, Hayward Gallery, London, UK (2021); Citizens of Memory, curated by Aindrea Emelife, The Perimeter, London, UK (2021); The Power of My Hands, curated by Suzanna Sousa and Odile Burluraux, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, France (2021); Force Times Distance: On Labor and its Sonic Ecologies, Sonsbeek 20-24, Arnhem, Netherlands (2021). 

Hwami’s work is held in public collections including Fondation Blachère, Apt, France; Government Art Collection, London, UK; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, USA; Jorge Perez Art Museum, Miami, USA; Kadist Foundation, Paris, France; Norval Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa; Pinault Collection, Paris, France; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Tate Gallery, London, UK; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, USA; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, USA; Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa.