Amanda Shingirai Mushate’s ‘Ingoma Kamama Wami?’ Charts a Bold, Emotional Evolution at NGZ

Walking through Ingoma Kamama Wami?, Amanda Shingirai Mushate’s first solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (NGZ), feels like stepping into an intimate dialogue between self-reflection, motherhood, memory, and metamorphosis. While fans of Mushate’s previous work will instantly recognize her signature hypnotic lines and recurring hues of blue, this new body of work reveals something more—an artist deepening her practice and courageously pushing personal and creative boundaries.

Curated by Fadzai Muchemwa, the ever-innovative curator of Contemporary Art at NGZ, the exhibition interrogates Mushate’s layered identity as a daughter, mother, wife, and artist. The title, Ingoma Kamama Wami? (loosely translated as “The Song of My Mother?”), signals the thematic heartbeat of the show—an introspective journey rooted in matriarchal strength and personal reckoning.

At the core of Mushate’s practice lies a genuine commitment to process emotion through art rather than seeking external affirmation. “With this show, I chose to look at my mom’s life and try to understand what I’m going through as a parent, a married person and an artist,” she explains.

This multi-dimensional gaze is not just abstract. It is tenderly literal, with a video installation that features her mother—who raised Mushate and her brother alone—braiding her hair while recounting the hardship of single parenting. There’s no bitterness in the testimony, just pride in perseverance: “To this day, I am most grateful for one thing: I was able to keep my children in school during those incredibly hard times,” her mother says in the video.

This raw maternal narrative anchors the emotional terrain of the exhibition, tracing both the visible and invisible ties that bind generations of women.

Since her bold 2021 debut Nguva ine Muridzi, Mushate has steadily shaped a recognizable yet evolving visual language—looping lines, interplay between light and shadow, and playful abstraction that invites deeper reflection. Her 2022 solo Shuviro Yamai (Mother’s Wish) and the joint 2024 exhibition Rudo Rwunouya Nemabasa (Love Comes With Work) with spouse Tashinga Majiri, both showcased her expanding exploration of familial roles and emotional labour.

With Dzimwe Nguva (2024), her most recent solo body of work, the familiar lines begin to change—thickening, ballooning, sometimes fraying at the edges. There is a subtle impatience in their execution, a signal that the medium that once sustained her may no longer offer the same solace.

Much like American abstract painters Rothko and Pollock—whose inner emotional chaos both fed and strained their work—Mushate seems to test the limits of abstraction. And just as it threatens to become too familiar, she breaks through it.

New figural forms rise behind the abstraction, surfacing like half-remembered dreams or submerged memories. In Zvidzidzo, the profile of a woman echoes the tragic legacy of Sarah Baartman. Zvishuwo zvemoyo paints a haunting family portrait. And in the diptych Chimiro nehukoshwa, her meandering lines collide and coalesce into shapes that pulse with new emotional weight.

Sculpture, too, becomes a new language for Mushate. Her color-saturated works in synthetic fibre mark an evolution—a rebirth from abstraction into tactile, tangible presence. This move suggests an artist not content with repetition but committed to rebirth, even if the labour is painful.

Throughout the exhibition, Mushate walks an emotional tightrope with fierce vulnerability. Her smile, like her work, carries the tension of someone who could burst into laughter or tears at any moment. “I believe it is essential to look within yourself and understand yourself more,” she says.

This unflinching honesty offers a mirror to her viewers—one that reflects not only her own fragility and resilience but ours as well.

Ingoma Kamama Wami? is more than a solo show. It is a milestone in a career that has thus far moved with the seasons of womanhood. It is an offering of truth, transition, and trust in the power of creation to heal and transform. As Mushate’s lines continue to loop infinitely—thickened by life, tempered by grief, and brightened by hope—she emerges not just as a powerful voice in Zimbabwean art, but as a generational storyteller weaving a visual song for those who came before and those still to come.