“What is meant for you will reach you, even if it is beneath two mountains. And what is not meant for you, will not reach you, even if it’s between your two lips.” - Imam Al-Ghazali

Winding down for the evening is ritualistic in nature. As the night tolls with the cost of exhaustion, across cultures and in every walk of human and animal life, our bodies cave to the moon’s bidding, resting vulnerably in the dark. Dreams are always around the corner of sleep, ready to fuel REM with synapses firing visions of a world familiar and incomprehensible. Many look to dreams for meaning, others merely brush them off as machinations of nonsense. For Portia Zvavahera, Zimbabwean painter and multi-disciplined artist, dreams are a vessel with which she exercises the supernatural out of her life. 

Risking personal safety and driving amidst an annual Southern California atmospheric river, David Zwirner debuted Portia's latest exhibition, Zvibereko zvemweya wangu. In speaking to Portia, she relayed how she captures these encounters with these otherworldly beings on canvas, “When I wake up, I will sketch the dream. In some cases, I won’t be able to visualize the dream and its energy, and when this happens, I will write about it instead.” Keeping a dream journal is a practice many prescribe to, as it helps to remember, but more so contextualize the composition of the immaterial. For Portia, this recontextualization of psyche leads to lines flowing freely in and out of oil work. The end of a thoroughfare pastel leads to a row of repeating shapes, terraforming the canvas’ foundation. Beeswax holds in place the leafed-in texture of pressed-in palm fronds, cloaking astral entities coming to the human realm.

Growing up within Shona and Pentecostal Christianity, Portia’s dreams are an act of storytelling. “Many of the stories in the Bible are about people’s dreams—how they interpreted them and were guided by them.” She went on to share that “her grandmother encouraged [her family] to discuss them, to help us see that they were communications from God.” Along the edges of each indelible work lay a thick negative space bordering the canvas. Portia explains, “Its purpose is always to offer light and protection as my paintings sometimes originate from a dark space, from unwanted spirits.” Within the batik technique, she further confirms the religious inherency about its elements: “I am trying to replicate the overwhelming, layered, and all-encompassing beauty of God’s creation. When applying the first layer, I am already thinking about the second and the way they’ll interact with each other. In a way, I am bringing the two worlds together: my conscious world that I see everyday.”

In a room meticulously arranged, each painting sits quietly poised on the cathedral-laden walls. Rain trickles high upon the glass windows panes of the ceiling overhead. “It’s a blessing when you can see something from your dreams, but only you can analyze them,” she earnestly lamented, discussing ways others can seek meaning from their dormant slumber. Maybe it’s human nature to reflect upon one’s own dreams after basking in the glory of the physical manifestation of another’s subconscious. In the mausoleum of stories that comprise the known world, one can’t help but wonder how many came from the dreams of another, and how many more will be told from that same, shared space.

Zvibereko zvemweya wangu will be on public display at David Zwirner through February 7th. 

‍