Kumbirai Makumbe is a Zimbabwean new media artist based in London. Using sculpture, audio-visual digital installation, image and video, they continually interrogate the multi-dimensionality of blackness, transcendence and ‘inbetweeness’.
Their current research interrogates the condition of ‘inbetweeness’ and ‘Intertopia’, a fictitious space which Makumbe has located to be in the throat of wormholes where those with ‘translocational belongings’ reside. ‘Intertopia’ stems from and draws from the cosmology, spiritual beliefs and ritualistic practices of the Shona people from Zimbabwe and its intersections with speculative interstellar travel, trans-ness & metamorphosis.
Makumbe’s starting point for this inquiry is attempting frame blackness in all its complexity and multidimensionality in a contemporary context. Wanderlust, movement between different spacetimes intersect with this through conceptualising blackness not as a what but as a where and when.
Through worldbuilding and the use of speculative science fiction narratives, they place significant efforts into exploring alternative modes of being and thinking that could negate ideologies inhibiting a ‘needed’ future.
They’re enticed by the materiality and malleability of digital matter and the infinite possibilities of its employability. They repeatedly bring elements from the digital worlds they’ve forged into physical spaces, through 3D printing, as a crucial practice akin to terraforming. Makumbe continually collapses elements from their worlds into present and lived spacetimes in order to blur the boundaries between the two.
Exhibitions
2022
Futures Past, 2022
Arebyte Gallery, UK
Group Show
Speech Sounds, 2022
Visual Carlow, Ireland
Group Show
In Dedication, 2022
We Exist & Koppel Projects, UK
Group Show
2021
Channel B, 2021
Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK
Group Show
From Then to Here, 2021
Roodkapje Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Group Show
Uncanny Reality, 2021
Symposion Lindabrunn, Austria
Group Show
2020
Disembodied Behaviours, 2020
Bitforms Gallery, New York, US
Group Show
Arebyte Gallery, August 2020
National Galleries of Zimbabwe, 2020-2021
Group Show
2019
BBZ Alternative Graduate Show 2019
Copeland Gallery, London, UK
Group Show
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Online Exhibitions
2022
ShowStudio
Group Show
2021
Pieces of Me, 2021
Transfer Gallery in Partnership with Left Gallery
Group Show
Control The Virus Vol. 3, 2021
Dateagle Art, London
Group Show
2020
Bitforms Gallery NYC & New Art City
Group Show
Vacation at the End of the World,
Offsite Projects
Group Show
Isthisit?
Group Show
2019
Arebyte On Screen,
Arebyte Gallery
Specter, Wrong Biennale
Group Show
GoingAway TV, 2019
Wrong Biennale,
In Partnership with Arebyte Gallery
Group Show
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Talks, Panel Discussions & Workshops:
2022
Where Do We Go From Here?! Part 4 - Workshop
The Feminist Library & Kinesis Collective
Shocked Quartz Festival
Host & Workshop Facilitator
Presentation & Panel Discussion
Invited Guest
Where Do We Go From Here?! Part 3
Montez Press
Host
2021
Where Do We Go From Here?! Part 2
Bloc Projects
Co-host
Recipes for a Technological Undoing
Sandberg Institute
Workshop Host
Art/ Work Association & Auto Italia
Host
Networked Futures: Worldbuilding and Video Games,
Isthisit?
Panelist
2020
Invited Artist
Tactics: Power and Play, 2020
Arebyte Gallery
Moderator & Speaker
2019
London Film Festival Experimenta Debate 2019,
ICA
In partnership with BFI & ICA
Guest Speaker
The Conch, October
South London Gallery,
Guest Speaker
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Awards and Grants
Black Artist’s Grant, 2020
Daniel Arsham & Samuel D Ross
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Publication & Contributions
LUX, Editted by Cairo Clarke
Contributor
Networked Futures: Online Exhibitions and Digital Hierarchies
Isthisit? Edited by Bob Bicknell Knight
Contributor & Interview
Chimeras: Inventory of synthetic cognition
Edited by Ilan Manouach and Anna Engelhardt
Published by Onassis Foundation
Contributor
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Selected Press
6 artists exploring the joy & pain of the trans experience
Feature, iD Vice
Review, Burlington Contemporary
Review, Art Newspaper
Feature, Wallpaper Magazine
The BBZ art show looks at what it means to take up space and to survive
Review, Dazed
BBZ BLK BK: Alternative Graduate Show 2019
Review, Skin Deep Mag