York's Shona Gallery
The
Blog
Stories of the artists and peoples behind the work: the sculptors, tribes, and traditions that have shaped our collection.
Richard Mteki
Richard Mteki was born in 1947 in Harare, Zimbabwe, the younger brother of the celebrated sculptor Boira Mteki. Growing up in proximity to one of the country's great artists planted...
John Type
John Type was born in 1963 in Harare and began carving stone in the late 1980s, drawn to the medium through contact with the Shona sculptural community that had grown...
Ngoni Chandigwa
Ngoni Chandigwa was born in 1968 near Mutare, in Zimbabwe’s eastern highlands, a landscape of granite ridges and mist-laden valleys that has long nurtured the country’s stone-carving tradition. He be...
Ndonye Mwanzilo
Ndonye Mwanzilo was born in 1967 in Zambia and came to the Zimbabwean stone-carving tradition as one of several artists from neighboring countries who found in the Shona sculptural community...
Gerald Takawira
Gerald Takawira was born in 1959 into one of Zimbabwe’s most celebrated sculptural families. The Takawira name is inseparable from the history of the Shona sculptural movement: John Takawira, Gerald’...
Denny Kanyemba
Denny Kanyemba was born in 1965 and developed his practice at Tengenenge, the sculptural community that became one of the most important incubators of Zimbabwean stone-carving in the post-independence...
Agrippa Ndongwe
Agrippa Ndongwe was born in 1958 in Harare and began carving stone in the early 1980s, as the Shona sculptural movement was entering its second phase of international recognition. He...
Damian Manuhwa
Damian Manuhwa was born in 1972 in Harare, a generation removed from the Workshop School artists who founded the Shona sculptural movement. Coming of age in post-independence Zimbabwe, he encountered...
Joseph Tozo
Joseph Tozo was born in 1960 and came of age at Tengenenge, the extraordinary sculptural community in Mashonaland Central that Tom Blomefield established in the late 1960s on his former...
Pfungwa Dziike
Pfungwa Dziike was born in 1975 in Harare and began sculpting in the late 1990s, studying under established Shona artists before finding his own formal language. The name Pfungwa, meaning...
Tinashe Makaza
Tinashe Makaza was born in 1980 and belongs to the youngest generation of sculptors in York’s Shona Gallery’s representation. He came of age as Zimbabwe’s 2000s economic crisis disrupted cultural...
Fungai Mwarowa
Fungai Mwarowa was born in 1955 in the Guruve district of Mashonaland Central, a region whose red earth sits above some of the finest stone deposits in Zimbabwe. He came...
Ben Apollo
Ben Apollo was born in 1969 and developed his practice at Tengenenge, the sculptural community that has proven to be one of the most enduring incubators of Zimbabwean stone carving...
Douglas Benhura
Douglas Benhura is among the most internationally recognized Shona sculptors of his generation, celebrated for a body of work that has found audiences and collectors on every continent. Born in...
Lincon Muteta
Lincon Muteta was born in 1978 in Harare and represents the fourth generation of the Shona sculptural tradition, artists who came of age not in the founding moment of the...
Coster Balakasi
Coster Balakasi was born in 1970 in Malawi and came to the Zimbabwean stone-carving tradition as an outsider, arriving from a neighboring country with its own sculptural traditions and finding...
Rose Chakanyuka
Rose Chakanyuka occupies a singular position in the history of Shona sculpture: she is among the very few women to have achieved sustained international recognition in a tradition that has...
The Kwele Tribe
The Kwele are a small Bantu-speaking people of the Sangha River region, straddling the border between the Republic of Congo and southeastern Gabon. Inhabitants of the dense equatorial rainforest, the...
The Bwa Tribe
The Bwa (also known as Bobo-Oulé) are a Gur-speaking people of central and western Burkina Faso and eastern Mali. They are renowned for producing some of the most dramatic and...
The Nafana Tribe
The Nafana are a small Gur-speaking people inhabiting the borderland between northwestern Ghana and northeastern Côte d'Ivoire. Despite their relatively small population, they are renowned across the...
The Lobi Tribe
The Lobi are a Voltaic-speaking people of southwestern Burkina Faso and northern Ghana, inhabitants of a semi-arid savannah frontier zone. Fiercely independent and historically resistant to both neig...
The Dan Tribe
The Dan are a Mande-speaking people of western Côte d'Ivoire and eastern Liberia, inhabiting the mountainous forest zone at the border of the two countries. Their mask tradition is one...
The Guro Tribe
The Guro are a Mande-speaking people of central Côte d'Ivoire, inhabiting a forested zone between the savannah cultures to the north and the coastal cultures to the south. Renowned for...
The Mossi Tribe
The Mossi are the largest ethnic group in Burkina Faso, organising themselves around a cluster of traditional kingdoms ruled by the Mogho Naba (Emperor of the World) in Ouagadougou. Their...
The Senufo Tribe
The Senufo are an agricultural people of the savannah zone of northern Côte d'Ivoire, southern Mali, and western Burkina Faso. Their culture is organised around the Poro, a male initiation...
The Kuba Tribe
The Kuba Kingdom, established in the 17th century in the Kasai region of present-day Democratic Republic of Congo, is one of the most celebrated art-producing civilisations in African history. At...
The Bamileke Tribe
The Bamileke are a cluster of related chiefdoms in the Western Highlands of Cameroon, a region of fertile volcanic plateaus known as the Grassfields. Each chiefdom is ruled by a...
The Fang Tribe
The Fang are a Bantu-speaking people of Gabon, southern Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea, inhabitants of the great equatorial rainforest of Central Africa. They are known across the world for producin...
The Baule Tribe
The Baule are an Akan people of central Côte d'Ivoire, descended from a group that migrated west from the Ashanti kingdom of present-day Ghana in the mid-18th century. Their founder,...
The Chewa
The Chewa are a Bantu-speaking people whose traditional homeland spans the border regions of present-day Malawi, Zambia, and northern Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe’s Chewa community inhabits primarily the northe...
The Makonde Tribe
The Makonde are an ethnic group indigenous to the Mueda Plateau of northern Mozambique and the Ruvuma region of southern Tanzania. Renowned across the world for their exceptional woodcarving tradition...
The Masaai Tribe
The Maasai are a Nilotic ethnic group inhabiting the semi-arid savannah of southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. Distinguished by their distinctive red shukas, elaborate beadwork, and warrior traditio...
The Shona Tribe
The Shona are the largest indigenous group in Zimbabwe, comprising roughly 80 percent of the country's population and divided into five principal clans: the Karanga, Zezuru, Korekore, Manyika, and Nda...
The Benin Kingdom
The Kingdom of Benin, centred on Benin City in present-day Nigeria, was one of the most sophisticated polities in pre-colonial Africa. At its height from the 13th to the 17th...
The Dogon Tribe
The Dogon are an ancient people of the Bandiagara Escarpment in Mali, a 500-kilometre sandstone cliff rising dramatically above the plains of the Niger bend. They settled here, in cliff-face...