"Creatures made up of aggregated waste, inorganic yet organic."
Julio Rizhi (b. 1991, Mbare, Harare, Zimbabwe) was raised between two traditions: his father fled Mozambique during the civil war, and the long-term social and psychological impacts of conflict run beneath much of his work. After several years of study at the Visual Art Studio of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, he chose to pursue his own experimental path, establishing himself as resident in sculpture and mixed media at Chinembiri Studios in Mbare, the high-density township of Harare where he was born, working alongside several of Zimbabwe's leading new-generation artists, including Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude, Moffat Takadiwa and Wycliffe Mundopa.
Rizhi's sculptures are built from the waste of the city: discarded plastics melted and merged with mesh wire, finished with spray paint, in dystopic and dysmorphic constructions whose overflowing physicality appears almost organic. The seductively bright colours of the molten plastic are, in his darkly humoured vision, a metaphor for the broken promises of a better future advertised but never delivered: through the socio-ethical prism of contemporary Zimbabwe, his work connects consumption to its outcomes, environmental degradation, pollution, youth unemployment and addiction, the social costs of high-density urban living. Critics have read his aggregated forms as "plastiglomerates", inorganic yet organic creatures with an uncanny capacity for survival, placing his practice in the African lineage that runs from Arte Povera to El Anatsui: artists who do not merely retool waste, but transfigure its moral weight.
Rizhi held his solo exhibitions "Ane Nzeve Anonzwa (Those Who Have Ears Will Listen)" (2017) and "Chakafukidza" (2020) at First Floor Gallery Harare, and "Level | Mosi-oa-Tunya" at First Floor Gallery Victoria Falls (2020). In 2022 he presented a two-person exhibition with Takunda Regis Billiat at Simchowitz DTLA, Los Angeles, preceded by the duo presentation "Plastiglomerate / Strange Attractor" at the Cape Town Art Residency. His work has featured in "Defying the Narrative: Contemporary Art from West and Southern Africa" at Ever Gold Projects, San Francisco (2018), at MACAAL, Marrakech, in the touring exhibition "Another Antipodes / Urban Axis" in Australia, and in group exhibitions with Wunika Mukan Gallery, Lagos. In 2026 his work appears in "Threads of Africa: Textiles from the Serge Tiroche Collection", in the group exhibition "Mwana Wevhu" at Mbare Art Space and at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe. He has taken part in art fairs including Investec Cape Town Art Fair, FNB Joburg Art Fair, AKAA Paris, Untitled Art Miami Beach and 1-54. He lives and works in Harare.