Kudzanai-Violet Hwami talks to Ben Luke for the Evening Standard’s Painting in Britain feature

“As an artist, you have to allow yourself to experience what it is you’re doing, which is, for me, putting paint on the surface, or using colour – the basic elements and forms,” she says. “Sometimes, I have felt that I forgot that a little bit; I’m focusing too much on wanting to be an artist who is saying a particular thing, wanting to maybe deal with a political subject, how the work is framed – for example the work being about displacement or some parts having to do with being queer. Those things are important, because they are part of me.”

She recalls that the American abstract painter Helen Frankenthaler was asked what it’s like to be a woman painter. Her answer: “The first thing I’m dealing with is just being a painter.” Hwami adds: “You can’t escape identity, class and race: I don’t know what it’s like to be a Black painter, I’m just a person who exists who is Black and has these experiences that maybe other people don’t have. But I’m dealing with painting. It’s something I’m trying to understand myself.”

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Image: Portrait of Kudzanai-Violet Hwami

Photo © Jo Metson Scott