Gillian Rosselli

About

Gillian Rosselli, Artist

In 2024, Gillian Rosselli will be among the artists representing Zimbabwe at the 60th Venice Biennale.

Gillian Rosselli (b. 1962) is a Zimbabwean artist whose practice also reflects a range of socio-political issues including domestic violence, the legacy of colonization and the refugee migration crisis. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art degree at the University of Cape Town in 1984 and developed her complex, distinctive language since then.

Rosselli’s work explores both personal and broader societal issues in Zimbabwe, and is mostly fueled by the artist‘s preoccupation with humanity’s injustices. Beside her socio-political mandate she is an expert in using her universal art language as a tool to link her work with the global contemporary agenda and its priority topics identity, gender, queerness. Rosselli’s paintings unfurl layers of embedded meaning to the viewer through the layering of acrylic paint, sensitive use of colour and ambiguous contours.

Rosselli has had six solo exhibitions to date. Her work is included in prestigious collections world-wide, public and private ones and has featured in several local and international exhibitions, including Five Bhobh - Painting At the End of an Era’ at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town in 2018. She has won several awards in Zimbabwe over the years, including the overall award of distinction for painting 1994.

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