NEW YORK, NY.- James Cohan presents Hurukuro, a two-person exhibition curated by Augusto Arbizo, featuring the work of Anthony Bumhira and Virginia Chihota, on view from March 1 through April 5, 2025, at the gallery’s 52 Walker Street location. This marks the first gallery exhibition in New York for both artists.

Hurukuro (the Shona word for “conversation”) brings together the work of Anthony Bumhira and Virginia Chihota to establish a personal and quietly potent dialogue. Bumhira and Chihota reflect on themes of intimacy, domesticity and the body, using the language of the everyday to pose broader existential questions. Both artists draw from their biographies, using their upbringing, family, religion, and community as foundational lenses to explore the intersections of personal and collective histories.

Hurukuro showcases large-scale, wall-based works that incorporate a variety of materials including fabric, thread, blankets, and paper doilies in Bumhira’s work; and printing inks, acrylic paint, and canvas in Chihota’s paintings. During the artists’ time at the National Gallery School at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, the curriculum emphasized commercial art techniques and ideas, such as multiples of genre pictures of street life and market scenes. These technical and formal ideas—which includes printmaking processes and the serial use of forms—would become instrumental in the early development of both artists. Bumhira and Chihota’s practices incorporate these core precepts as a point of departure to materially and compositionally innovative ends.

Through a mix of traditional and handmade strategies —such as serigraphy (silkscreen printing), stamping, cut- paper, and doily stitching—Bumhira and Chihota experiment with layered compositions that bring the figure to the forefront. For Bumhira, the use of doilies and stitching is a tender acknowledgment of a craft used by his mother for border trade; and his utilization of blankets touches on their use for comfort and shelter. In Chihota’s practice, the use of silkscreen allows her to repeat specific motifs, such as windows, chairs, torsos - and to examine their different meanings. Repetition becomes a form of prayer, and recurring motifs allow her to remember dreams, question reality, and mine their expressive potential.

For both artists, figures and symbols emerge within vibrant and graphic fields, creating works with complex visual and emotional resonances. Weaving together symbolic representations of Zimbabwean folklore, motherhood, faith, and kinship, Bumhira and Chihota posit distinctive modes of content-rich abstraction.

Anthony Bumhira (b. 1985, Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe; d. 2020) graduated in Fine Arts from the National Art Gallery Workshop School in Harare, Zimbabwe, in 2008. In his short life, Bumhira was the subject of two solo exhibitions at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe: Modern View, which opened upon his graduation at the age of 23, and a posthumous survey exhibition presented in 2025. His work has been featured in exhibitions at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa; Gabbaron Foundation, New York, and Lucie Chang Fine Arts, Hong Kong. Bumhira’s work is included in the permanent collections of Zeitz MOCAA and the Gabbaron Foundation.

Virginia Chihota (b. 1983, Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe) graduated in Fine Art from the National Art Gallery Workshop School in Harare, Zimbabwe in 2004, followed by a Diploma in Fine Art from Harare Polytechnic in 2006. Chihota represented Zimbabwe at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 and was awarded the Prix Canson in the same year. In 2021, her works were commissioned by the Opéra National de Paris, France for Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida. Chihota will be the subject of upcoming solo exhibitions at Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla, Spain (2026) and Museum Zutphen, Zutphen, Netherlands (2025).

Recent major exhibitions include: As Feeling Births Idea, Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK (group - 2024); Chibereko Chakaramba Kuudzirwa (The Womb Refused To Be Told), Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK (solo - 2023); /5th Ljubljana Biennale, Ljubljana, Slovenia (group - 2023); I See You, Tiwani Contemporary, Lagos, Nigeria (group - 2022); The Norval Sovereign African Art Prize Finalists Exhibition, Norval Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa (group - 2022); Whose Am I? I Am Not My Own (Ndiri Waani? Handisi Muridi Wangu), Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK (solo - 2021); Uri Mwana Wani? (Whose Child Are you?), National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare (solo - 201y); Virginia Chihota, ULUCG Artists’ Pavilion, Montenegro (solo - 201y); Mhamha, Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK (solo - 201y); Ultrasanity. On Madness, Sanitation, Antipsychiatry And Resistance, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, Germany (group - 201y); Close: Drawn Portraits, The Drawing Room, London, UK (group - 2018); The E-qualities of Women, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe (group - 2018). Chihota currently lives and works in New York.