Artists: Kresiah Mukwazhi in conversation with Jeanette Pacher

<p><em>Secession Podcast: Artists</em> is a series of conversations featuring artists exhibiting at the Secession. This episode is a conversation between the artist Kresiah Mukwazhi and the curator Jeanette Pacher. It was recorded on February 17, 2023 in the context of the exhibition:</p> <p>Kresiah Mukwazhi<br /> <em>Kirawa</em><br /> 17.2. – 16.4.2023</p> <p>In <em>Kirawa</em>, her first solo exhibition at an Austrian institution, Kresiah Mukwazhi presents a new body of work consisting of textile paintings and video works. Her mixed-media collages, sculptures, videos, and performances are informed by her personal experiences and observations of gender-based violence, exploitation and abuse in her native Zimbabwe. In vibrant textile works, female figures perform seemingly vulgar and obscene gestures, hinting at the artist’s inquiries into the arduous working and living conditions of female sex workers in Zimbabwe’s patriarchal society. Against this backdrop of precarization and marginalization, Mukwazhi uses her powerful work as a form of visual activism, scrupulously carving out forms of resistance and self-empowerment. Mutual support and encouragement, together with humor as a weapon and means of resistance, are recurring themes in her work.</p>