Amanda Shingirai Mushate, Ebunkosini, 2022, oil on canvas, 211 x 210 cm

Courtesy: First Floor Gallery, Harare and the artist

Founded in Harare in 2009 by Marcus Gora and Valerie Kabov as an experimental artist-run initiative, First Floor Gallery Harare, has grown to become Zimbabwe’s leading contemporary art gallery. Focused on artist empowerment and innovation, the gallery hosts residencies and exchanges, master classes, as well as playing host to projects by a broad range of creative professionals from fashion designers to poets, musicians and film makers. As advocates for development of economically sustainable and flourishing art scenes in Africa, First Floor Gallery Harare has also co-founded the African Art Galleries Association and Emerging Painting Invitational, the pan-African emerging painting prize. As part of growing its range of support and regional engagement, in 2020 First Floor Gallery Harare opened up its second gallery space in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe’s most diverse and fastest growing city.
Since inception First Floor Gallery Harare has seen international engagement, collaboration and building a globalised network of collaboration as crucial to its mission and vision. The gallery takes part in international fairs including Art Basel Miami Beach, Artissima in Turin, Paris Internationale, Cape Town Art Fair, Art Joburg, London Art Fair, SWAB Barcelona and many others. Our guest artists have included – Lavar Munroe (Baltimore/Bahamas), Simeon Nelson (London), Cristiano Mangovo (Luanda), Richard Butler Bowdon (Melbourne, Australia). We also frequently collaborate on exhibition projects with galleries and collectives internationally, including most recently Echoes (Moses Serubiri curator), Johnson Jenkins Gallery New York, Negotiating Chaos (Pebofatso Mokoena and Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude in Conversation) Simone Subal Gallery New York, True Optimism (Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude) at Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai, Another Antipodes/urban axis – a survey of art emerging from Southern Africa at PS1 Art space Freemantle, Australia in 2017.
Under First Floor Gallery Harare leadership, the gallery artists are achieving impressive international recognition – Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude took part in New Museum Triennial in 2018, Wycliffe Mundopa had a solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2021, Helen Teede and Troy Makaza took part in Five Bhobh survey of contemporary Zimbabwean art at Zeitz MoCAA museum in Cape Town, Helen Teede and Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude were both selected as finalists in Norval Sovereign Art Prize in 2021 (Teede) and 2022 (Nyaude). First Floor Gallery Harare artists’ works are found in some of the worlds prestigious art collections including the Smithsonian Museum of African Art, Washington, Rubell Family Collection, Miami, Jorge Perez Collection, Miami, Fondation Ben y Yannick Jakober, Mallorca, Fondation Gandur, Geneva and many more.