Tendai Mupita (b. 1990) is a multidisciplinary artist from Zimbabwe. He specializes in painting, video and sculpture in particular. He graduated from Chinhoyi University of Technology in 20215 with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and later acquired his Masters in Fine Arts sculpture from the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond in 2023.
In 2017, he was awarded the Blessing Ngobeni Artist Residency at the Bag Factory in Johannesburg, South Africa. He also participated in the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, USA, in 2019. His work has been exhibited in numerous shows across Zimbabwe, Kenya, Italy, London, the USA, and South Africa.
Tendai Mupita’s works stems from meditative practices. The artist is interested in the means and process, conditions and outcomes of meditation through drawing, painting and mixed media. With the range of inspiration from religion, spirituality and traditional/cultural organization of African society, he uses the form of the circle as a starting point. Colour is an important element in his work as an agent to disrupt conscious and visual understanding and to assign codification to esoteric knowledge that Mupita explores in his work.
Making use of humanoid figures carrying animal heads to study the human body as an agent of spiritual consciousness that is sometimes governed by primitive gestures and instincts. This is connected to his fascination with Shona folklores where the human is not always at the top of the food chain or the center of existence. The bodies and forms alluded to are secretive of their physical nature and psychology. Their presence is enigmatic. Tendai Mupita’s work deliberately register a loss or absence of locality as he works towards creating a third one in which hybridized creatures and ideas can thrive. His themes range from the exploration of dreams to studying the spiritual and spatial architecture of pan African mythology with special focus on Shona folklore.
Mupita was a printmaking and artists’ assistant to Senzo Shabangu and Ethiopian artist-in-residence Endale Desalegn. A final year art student at Zimbabwe’s Chinhoyi University at the time, Mupita also spent part of the year in classes and consultation with South African artists Kim Sacks and Toni-Ann Ballenden. Mupita has been involved in several printmaking workshops and seminars in Zimbabwe.
