Tafadzwa Tega (born 1985 in Harare, Zimbabwe) currently lives and works in South Africa, where he moved in 2008. His artistic career started at the age of 10, inspired by his artist brother and uncle. Tega studied at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, where he showed his works for the first time. From 2012 he has showed in numerous galleries in South Africa, and many important private and public collections have acquired his works, such as the Spier Foundation and the University of Cape Town, South Africa, Fundacion AMMA, Mexico, and Fundacion para el Desarrollo de la Pintura (FCDP) in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain. His work explores stories of migration, of claiming success and its role in African society. The sense of failure and fear that ensues from leaving the territorial boundaries of belonging and the bond that takes shape from the tradition of one's origins left behind. Narratives that conceal a collective concern and at the same time reveal the drive to transcend pre-established narratives. His subjects seem suspended in tension between the uncertainty of the future and a strong hope for change, in a celebration of the present.
