Fungai Marima

Presentation

Zimbabwean born artist who is based in London. My practice is primarily based on the body as archive, the materiality of the body and its relationship to archiving. Often self-reflective my work investigates themes of displacement, memory, trauma and the female body, highlight my Zimbabwean heritage and personal childhood and adult experiences. I use methodologies within printmaking, performance, sculpture and sound, in attempts to embody the corporeal body. I investigate the body as an archive, to highlight issues of trauma and gendered identity politics within contemporary culture. I’m intrigued by the parallel relationship processes such as printmaking and performance have to societies, traditions and culture. I make work that leaves vestiges of the mind and body onto surfaces and making imagery which reveals the silenced traces of what humans feel and experience on a day to day basis. The body being a constant material within my work in the process and production of making artwork, which I use to question and attempt to push boundaries of the skin onto surrounding materials, as well as through researching the body as an archival material (living or non-living) and visualising the often silenced personal and collective narratives. Whilst adopting ideas of ‘Knowing From The Inside’ - Ingold, the boundary of the skin holds memories and is a surface that imprints and is imprinted onto in which I investigate the events that occur onto the body as stories that can be told, remembered and archived through the use of instinctive ways of understanding. Ana Mendieta, Janine Antoni and Zanele Muholi are a few artists that have assisted in my thinking regarding the production of work and use of materials that investigate the re-imagination of identities within contemporary cultures, through portrayal of the body within their work. As an artist I attempt to create a narrative that opens room for conversation, contemplation, questioning of the world around us through investigation of the bodies we inhabit.