nora chipaumire makes work and creates ideas that straddle multiple imaginaries — African, black, woman. A life lived through aesthetics informed by refusal, defiance, negotiation, contradictions and more. These refusals take form of movement, objects, non objects, manifestos, sound and building a pedagogical practice (nhaka) that works the present now with the present past.
The artist talk and conversation with nora chipaumire will follow her oeuvre throughout her career highlighting her debut film Afro Promo #1 Kinglady (2016) and her most recent installation: Gadzi (2026) which is commissioned by Tate Museum, London. Gadzi, a ‘living and breathing organism’, constructed entirely by hand, draws on the legends, stones and soil of her native country, Zimbabwe.
Afrovibes is an annual multidisciplinary performing arts festival established in 1999. The festival presents contemporary African arts from several disciplines – theatre, dance, spoken word, visual arts to the audience of the Netherlands, accompanied by an extended fringe programme of public debates, artist talks, master classes and workshops. This year’s theme, soil | soul, centers the notion of land and how African artists bring the idea of spirit and soil into the debate and have turned their attention to the land of their birth, the soil of their ancestors, the home of their heritage, as a spiritual quest. It serves as a living repository of ancestral spirits, where rituals, ancestral graves, and sacred natural sites maintain ecological, cultural, and cosmological harmony.
nora chipaumire makes work and creates ideas that straddle multiple imaginaries — African, black, woman. A life lived through aesthetics informed by refusal, defiance, negotiation, contradictions and more. These refusals take form of movement, objects, non objects, manifestos, sound and building a pedagogical practice (nhaka) that works the present now with the present past. In her debut film Afro Promo #1 Kinglady, she places her feet on land and declares herself Kinglady of that same land which was previously colonized.
The film is zany, colorful, ironic and futurist - an Afro-Feminist manifesto beautifying bodies to claim the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Using low-tech — do-ityourself aesthetics, the film demonstrates how presence, fashion and pop culture can be a vehicle for self-invention and selfdetermination.
The film features a black African female superhero who commands regal authority. Her superhero powers are the mastery of time, space and energy i.e. dance: a virtuosity that brings beauty, health, wellbeing to all who witness her dance. The film will be on view in the Wereldmuseum Rotterdam in the Greenroom (ground floor) from Thursday 1st October until Sunday 18th October. More info and viewing times to follow.
Director & Choreography nora chipaumire
Director of Photography Benjamin Seth Wolfe
Editor Alla Kovgan
Art Director Peter Born
Performers nora chipaumire, Shamar Watt
Unit Production Manager Anthony Pemberton
Costume Designer nora chipaumire
Wardrobe supervisor Juna Skenderi
Gaffer Eric Neason
1st Assistant Camera Melanie St. Clair
2nd Assistant Camera Jacob Shapiro
Grips Geoffrey Perez, Joseph Swelee, Ja’bri Rios-Rhodes
Producer Jedediah Wheeler
Production Manager Ryan Graves
Technical Director Colin van Horne
Production Crew Victoria Chirumbolo, Jeffrey Cierniak, Jason Flamos, Thomas Carey Gsell, Jesse Haack, Kaja Nelson, Christopher Ollo, Rocco Terranova, Steven Rust, Benjamin Weill
Production Assistants Gina Barbagallo, Emmanuel Class, Nicole Diglio, Emmanuel Paulino
Extras Mechi Brown, Joseph Galan, Sherissa Hernandez, Kelsey Johnson, Jenny Cosma
Colorist Nat Jencks
Foley/Narration Recording & Sound Mix Joseph Branciforte