Kresiah Mukwazhi reflects on her exhibition ‘Shanduko nhema’, tracing the politics of intimacy, circulation, and Black feminist refusal within Museum Ludwig’s Schultze Projects.
20 March 2026
In ‘Shanduko nhema‘, Kresiah Mukwazhi gathers the intimate residues of women’s lives into a monumental field of abstraction. This field resists easy legibility but insists on proximity. Composed of thousands of worn bras, the work moves between distance and detail, public scale and private gesture. It reveals a dense terrain of labour, care, and resistance. Installed within the architectural expanse of Museum Ludwig’s stairwell as part of Schultze Projects #4, the work returns both material and meaning to the circuits that produced them. This complicates narratives of circulation, consumption, and power. In this conversation, Mukwazhi speaks with Suzette Bell-Roberts about the politics of looking, the weight of lived experience embedded in material, and the urgent task of reimagining Black feminist agency on its own terms.
Kresiah Mukwazhi, ‘Shanduko nhema’, 2024. Schultze Projects #4, Museum Ludwig, Cologne. © Kresiah Mukwazhi. Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Cologne/Vincent Quack
ART AFRICA: Your work ‘Shanduko nhema’appears as a monumental abstraction from afar, yet reveals intimate materials on closer inspection. How does this tension shape the way audiences encounter the politics within the work?
It is in the act of coming closer that the work begins to unfold. The materials reveal themselves, and with them, a more intimate and charged register emerges. That shift from monumentality to intimacy creates a moment of surprise or even disorientation. The viewer is held between scale and detail. Within that tension, the political undercurrents begin to surface. One experiences a moment of collective resistance, inviting the audience to confront what might otherwise remain obscured at a distance.
The piece is composed of thousands of straps and fasteners from worn bras. What drew you to this material, and how do its traces reflect women’s lived experiences?
What drew me to this material was a search for a language that could hold both provocation and power, without losing intimacy. I was interested in working with something that carries a quiet charge in our social context—something familiar, yet rarely permitted to be seen. In many African communities, women’s undergarments are not meant for public display; they exist within a private, almost sacred boundary. Even more, the act of an older woman undressing in protest carries deep cultural weight. It is historically understood as a gesture capable of invoking disruption, misfortune, drought, or even a disturbance of communal balance.
By working with worn bras, I am drawing on this layered tension. These are not neutral objects. They carry the residue of lived experience. The faint traces of sweat, breastmilk, and daily wear speak to the body as a site of labour, care, and sustenance. In assembling thousands of these straps and fasteners, I am interested in how these intimate fragments accumulate into a collective narrative. This narrative reflects fertility, endurance, and the often-unseen work of women’s lives.
Kresiah Mukwazhi, ‘Shanduko nhema’, 2024. Schultze Projects #4, Museum Ludwig, Cologne. © Kresiah Mukwazhi. Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Cologne/Vincent Quack.
Your practice often addresses gender based violence and structural oppression. How does presenting this work in a European museum context shift or expand its meaning?
Presenting this work in a European museum context carries, for me, the resonance of “return to sender.” The bras I work with often originate in Europe and are donated to markets in Africa. In some regions, their resale has even been prohibited due to concerns around hygiene and safety, including the materials used in their construction. To me, this mirrors certain Western ideologies that have been absorbed into African contexts without sufficient questioning of their relevance or impact. Ultimately, the work asks where responsibility lies and what it means to return not just objects but narratives to the spaces that produced them.
The materials also reference the global circulation of second-hand clothing. How does this flow of garments inform your thinking about colonial histories and contemporary consumption?
It returns me, again and again, to the question of origin—of where things begin, and how they travel. I reflect on the systems that enable circulation, excess, and eventual disposal. These movements are never neutral. The global flow of second-hand clothing carries layered histories of production, deeply entangled with colonial legacies. At the same time, I’m interested in how these garments arrive and settle into new contexts. They quietly reshape local textile economies and cultural identities. There’s a tension there: between reuse and displacement. What does it mean for something once deemed disposable to become embedded in another place, another life? It makes me wonder whether identity itself can be treated similarly—circulated, shed, and reinhabited.
Kresiah Mukwazhi, ‘Shanduko nhema’, 2024. Schultze Projects #4, Museum Ludwig, Cologne. © Kresiah Mukwazhi. Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Cologne/Vincent Quack
The title’ Shanduko nhema’ carries layered meanings in Shona. How does this duality allow you to question historical and cultural narratives around Blackness?
What resonates most deeply with me about ‘Shanduko nhema’ is its lesser-considered meaning, “a false transformation,” the illusion of change where, in truth, very little has shifted. That tension sits at the heart of how I interrogate cultural identity, especially within contemporary expressions of feminism. For Black women, there is an urgent need to define what liberation means on our own terms. This should happen before aligning ourselves with frameworks that may ultimately misrepresent or even diminish us. It is important to question whether these systems were designed with us in mind.
Your work frequently emerges from conversations with marginalised women. How have these encounters shaped the conceptual grounding of this installation?
Sex work, often described as the oldest profession, speaks to a kind of enduring presence that cannot be ignored. Its persistence reveals not only economic realities but also the ways in which patriarchal systems remain entangled with, and sometimes dependent on, the very structures they seek to control. Through my conversations with marginalised women, particularly sex workers, I have come to understand this paradox more intimately. There is a quiet yet undeniable power within spaces often dismissed or stigmatised.
This work leans toward abstraction more than some of your earlier figurative pieces. What possibilities does abstraction open for you as a storyteller?
I feel that abstraction gives me more freedom to remove unnecessary decorative elements that one is tempted to add when creating. It lets me approach my work with more depth, rawness, and vulnerability. I believe this reflects a more intimate relationship with the medium itself.
Kresiah Mukwazhi, ‘Shanduko nhema’, 2024. Schultze Projects #4, Museum Ludwig, Cologne. © Kresiah Mukwazhi. Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Cologne/Vincent Quack.
Installed across the museum’s stairwell wall, the work occupies a highly visible architectural space. How did you approach the relationship between scale, site, and collective presence?
This was one of the most demanding challenges my practice has encountered so far. The scale of the work exceeded the physical limits of my studio. I had to find unconventional ways to engage with it. At one point, the only way I could fully take it in was by laying it out in an empty swimming pool. That improvised space allowed me to momentarily experience its breadth. I wasn’t able to see the work suspended in its intended form until the installation at the museum itself. In many ways, the process required a great deal of trust. I’m deeply grateful to Yilmaz for believing in the possibility of this gesture, and to the many hands that helped bring it into being.
The exhibition at Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, closes on 14 June 2026.
