The body and the narrative are at the heart of Epheas Maposa’s paintings: bodies that are half-human, half-animal, with very marked lines, evolving in surrealist and baroque worlds. Each work delivers a narrative mixing in an assumed dreamlike vein, drawn details, and colorist motifs. A prolific narrator, he uses the distortion of bodies and spaces to create disillusioned tales that testify to the breakdown of Zimbabwe’s social and political structure. Maposa is self-taught. Drawing in the street, his first source of inspiration, he joined Village Unhu in 2013 where he was able to benefit from spaces and equipment to work and develop under Misheck Masamvu and alongside other artists in the collective. Since 2014, Maposa has exhibited at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe as well as at the Gallery Delta. In 2017 and 2018, he participated in the FNB Joburg art fair and Investec Cape Town art fair. Maposa has also participated in several residency programs between Johannesburg and Harare. In 2019, he was runner-up in the Emerging painting Pan-African art prize.
