The sole becomes a soul, the heel a healing, the tongue a prayer: in Takura's hands the discarded shoe speaks for the body that wore it.
Tawanda Takura (b. December 1989, Zimbabwe) trained as a shoemaker, and from that craft drew the material and the method of his art. His sculptures are built from found objects, above all old shoes, which he takes apart and expertly reassembles, giving them a new lease of life. The discarded shoe, for Takura, carries the biography of its owner: the residue left inside fascinates him because, in his words, working with old shoes feels like working in the presence of a present but absent body, the residue becoming the extension of the person. From this intuition he has developed a precise symbolic vocabulary in which each component speaks: the sole represents the soul; the male heel, manhood and the process of healing; the stiletto heel, feminism and a point of pain or a weapon; the shoe tongue, the spoken word, conversation and spiritual utterance. Through these transfigured materials his work offers a commentary on the social structures and religious landscape of his community, questioning identity and spirituality, their existence and their purpose.
Takura's recognition began at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, where he won awards at the Annual Heritage competition and for the Chinese Year of the Horse exhibition (2014), and where in 2023 he held his first solo exhibition, "Katundu Katurikwa". In 2024 he received the National Annual Merit Award (NAMA) in Zimbabwe and the Cassirer Welz Award in South Africa, and presented the solo exhibition "Rabbit Hole Runs Deep" at the Bag Factory Artist Studios, Johannesburg; in 2025 he completed a residency at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria, Italy. Since 2013 he has exhibited at the FNB Joburg and Investec Cape Town art fairs with Village Unhu and Guns and Rain, with group exhibitions and residencies in South Africa, Mauritius, Hong Kong and Italy, including the SAFFCA residency and exhibitions (2019-2020), Nirox Sculpture Park (2021), "Meeting Places" and "Unnatural Objects" with Guns and Rain (2021), SculptX at the Melrose Gallery (2021), "Full Circle Art Africa" and "Vibrant Africa" in Hong Kong (2018), and "Identity, Migration and Belonging" in Mauritius (2017). He lives and works in his hometown of Chitungwiza, Harare.