
Recycled plastic bottles, straws, thread; textile assemblage; mixed media
Pardon Mapondera
About the Artist
Mapondera's multi-disciplinary practice examines transformation through material re-use — working with discarded plastic bottles, straws, and thread to create complex textile compositions that engage layered narratives of history, culture, ecology, spirituality, and identity. Refusing to let us look away from the consequences of consumption, he proposes that regeneration is both an aesthetic and an ethical act.
Winner of the Outstanding Male Visual Artist award at the 2026 National Arts Merit Awards in Zimbabwe, Mapondera is included in Zimbabwe's Pavilion — Second Nature | Manyonga — at the 61st Venice Biennale (2026). He previously participated in the Indibano residency in Dallas, extending his practice into dialogue with the African diaspora in North America.
Based In
Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe / Cape Town (working across both)
Medium
Recycled plastic bottles, straws, thread; textile assemblage; mixed media
Discipline
Multidisciplinary practice — sculpture, textile, installation
Themes
Material transformation and re-use, ecology and survival, history and memory, spirituality and identity, regeneration as ethical act
Notable Exhibitions
Second Nature | Manyonga* — Zimbabwe Pavilion, 61st Venice Biennale (2026); *Crossing Lines* — Dallas, USA (Indibano Art Residency, 2025); represented by SMAC Gallery
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