Mahari Chabwera
I'm Mahari, an artist, curator and writer born in 1995 in Washington DC. After graduating with a painting degree from VCU in 2017, I started cultivating communion rooted in radical Black well-being and self-determination. I'm committed to creating self-soothing salves, spiritual maturation, and liberatory magic medicine making. I was the 2019 - 2020 recipient of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Professional Fellowship, and the 2020 recipient of the Visual Arts Center Emerging Artist Award. I live and work between Newport News and Richmond, Virginia where I am one of five 2020 - 2021 First Patron Artists in Residence with the Contemporary Arts Network. I've led shared projects like In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, We Made Armor, 2019 and Primordial Emanations, that which is brought forth follows the womb: a surrender to her luminous blackness, 2020, as embodiments of Black space for Black people to share and receive recognition for our cultural, intellectual contributions while we’re still here. I read writers like Tananarive Due, Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara, Octavia Butler & Ntozake Shange for sustenance and direction. I think about my work as ancestor reverence.