Panel Discussion: Portia Zvavahera: Zvakazarurwa

Tamar Garb

Tamar Garb is Durning Professor in the History of Art at UCL. She has published widely on questions of gender and sexuality in Modern and Contemporary Art as well as on photography  from Africa, the work of women artists and feminist aesthetics. Her curatorial practice includes Gauguin: Maker of Myth, Tate 2011, Figures & Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography, V&A, 2011, Distance & Desire: Encounters with the African Archive, Walther Coll. 2014, Conversations in Letters & Lines: William Kentridge and Vivienne Koorland, Fruitmarket,,2016, Made Routes: Berni Searle and Vivienne Koorland, Richard Saltoun Gallery, 2019 and Beyond the Binary: Santu Mofokeng and David Goldblatt, Walther Coll. 2023.

Sarah Wood

Sarah Wood is as an artist-filmmaker, writer and curator. She works with the still and moving image to explore the role the documentary archival plays in the narration of history. Her ambition is to generate a cinema of ideas – experimenting with film form and installation design to offer renewing space for viewers to consider some of the key social and political issues of our time.

Alyce Mahon

Alyce Mahon is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge. Her work explores the dynamic between art, politics, and sexuality with a focus on global Surrealism and its legacies in contemporary art practice. She is the author of Surrealism and the Politics of Eros, 1938-1968 (Thames & Hudson, 2005), Eroticism & Art (Oxford University Press, 2005 and 2007), The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde (Princeton University Press, 2020), Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist World (forthcoming with Yale University Press in 2025) and the edited catalogue Dorothea Tanning (Reina Sofia/ Tate Publishing, 2018), as well as numerous journal, book and catalogue essays on Surrealist, avant-garde, and feminist art. She is also the inaugural co-editor of the International Journal of Surrealism, launched with Minnesota University Press in 2023. Her curatorial work includes curating the first major retrospective of Dorothea Tanning for the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid and the Tate Modern, London (2018-2019) and SADE: Freedom or Evil for the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (2023) and she is the Curatorial Advisor for Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds at Tate St Ives and Tate London (2025).

Kgomotso Ramushu

Ramushu is a writer, researcher with vested interests in the humanities and social sciences. She is currently pursuing an MPhil in African Studies at the University of Cambridge. She is also a Research Associate at the Africa Open Institute (Stellenbosch University). Kgomotso utilizes the arts as an instrument for knowledge production, preservation and critique. She has produced theatre productions such as Chilahaebolae (staged at Funda Centre, University of the Witwatersrand and The Performing Arts Centre of the Free State) and Dizhozo (Mocoseng, Mahikeng). She spearheaded the Lentswe Playwrights Education Programme through the South African State Theatre and a conversation series titled Zuhoyihoyi through Funda Centre. An advocate for transdisciplinary approaches, she has served as a consultant for organisations including the Puku Children’s Literature Foundation, Ilifa Lethu, Abethu Heritage Initiative and the Art & Ubuntu Trust. Ramushu’s interest in the production of knowledge was shaped by a decade in education policy and research programme support. Ramushu is the founder of the Ndoli Jowei Archival Project which aims to conserve and disseminate biographies of African women’s visual artists and collectives at home and in the diaspora. This work has been supported by the Wikimedia Foundaiton, Africa No Filter and the National Arts Council of South Africa and will be launched in 2025.