Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

Portia Zvavahera is one of the outstanding artists of her generation. Born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1985, she has developed a unique combination of print/painting techniques to register a private world of dreams, fantasies and figural constructions. She received her art education in Zimbabwe in the early 2000s, and has become recognised in the past decade as one of the foremost representatives of African figuration, showcased at the Venice Biennale in 2022, and in a number of commercial gallery exhibitions in South Africa, the US and the UK. She has not yet had a solo show in a public museum in Europe. This new publication accompanies a major exhibition, curated by Tamar Garb, which will include reproductions of brand new works created on the occasion of this exhibition alongside a selection of recent and older paintings which reveal the depth and richness of Zvavahera’s practice. The focus will be on the theme of dreams, fantasy and figuration, and large details will highlight Zvavahera’s innovative amalgamation of printmaking and painting techniques that build rich surfaces to create her private cosmology of creatures and contexts. The book will feature a significant new essay from curator Tamar Garb and will centre around an extensive conversation between Garb, Sinazo Chiya, Tandazani Dhlakama and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela discussing Zvavahera’s engagement with eros, intimacy and female-centred experience. The book will open up how Zvavahera’s works emerge from dreams; being figurative without being illustrative, registering a world of feminine experience and fantasy.

An acutely nuanced and original study of a state-sanctioned mass murderer. Not since Dead Man Walking have we seen so provocative a first-person encounter with the human face of evil. Eugene de Kock, the commanding officer of state-sanctioned apartheid death squads, is currently serving 212 years in jail for crimes against humanity. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, who grew up in a black township in South Africa, served as a psychologist on that country's great national experiment in healing, the Truth and Reconcilation Commission. As this book opens, in an act of inescapable, multilayered symbolism and extraordinary psychological courage, Gobodo-Madikizela enters Pretoria's maximum security prison to meet the man called "Prime Evil." What follows is a journey into what it means to be human. Gobodo-Madikizela's experience with and deep empathy for victims of murderous violence, including those killed by de Kock and their families and friends, become clear in arresting scenes set during the TRC hearings, in which both perpetrators and their victims are given voice. The author's profound understanding of the language and memory of violence, and of the searingly complex issues surrounding apology and forgiveness after mass atrocity, will leave a mark on scholarship as well as on our emotional lives. Gobodo-Madikizela's journey with de Kock, during which she allows us to witness the extraordinary awakening of his remorse, brings us to one of the great questions of our time: What does it mean when we discover that the incarnation of evil is as frighteningly human as we are?