Central to the work of these artists is the tension between the personal and the collective, the psychological and the political that characterises their works. For all of them, art is a tool to shed light on their biography and the realities of daily life in their home country while exploring universal themes of identity, relationships, and displacement.

Admire Kamudzengerere’s works confront the audience with self-portraits that appear to be concealed, locked in, almost behind bars. Produced through the experimental use of printmaking techniques – including monotype, silkscreen, and lithography – but also of a diverse range of materials – such as mesh wire, metallic net, mud, fabric ink, and oil paint -these works feature an arresting layering of textures and colours.

Khadija Jayi’s artistic work is then elaborated in a logic of annihilation, with the aim of re-adapting the fragments of a broken identity. An identity that, to ward off the sufferings of a painful past, must undergo a test of extreme purification: that of fire, whose virtue is to cauterize and heal badly healed wounds.

Fatiha Zemmouri’s approach is based on an unfailing correspondence between thought and technical skill but does not sacrifice the cathartic virtues of art, the ability of the creative act to represent the agitations of the soul in the material.

Courtesy of Galleria Anna Marra.