Barnabas Ticha Muvhuti is a cultural worker and an art historian with research interests in the early modern art workshops of Southern Africa. His current research traces the artistic lineages emerging out of the early modern schools. He writes on contemporary art practices in Africa, as well as the current migration trends in Southern Africa. He has written several exhibition reviews, opinion pieces, and carried out multiple interviews/conversations with artists and curators.
He was the first recipient of the Arak Collection Art Writing Residency, May-November 2023. He has worked as a Gallery Assistant at the AVA Gallery in Cape Town and the Centre for African Studies Gallery at the University of Cape Town (UCT), a Research Assistant and Project Manager at the Centre for Curating the Archive (UCT), and a Research Assistant for the Curatorial Department at the Zeitz MOCAA Museum (helping research for the groundbreaking When We See Us exhibition, currently showing at the Kunstmuseum Basel). He is member of the Refugees in Towns research project of The Fletcher School at Tufts University. He is also a member of the Africa South Art Initiative (ASAI).
Selected publications
Book
Chronicles of the Road: Five nations, five artists. Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press, 2024.
Selected articles
“Narrative: Life in South Africa: Irresistible soft power meets the hard reality.” Handbook on Forced Migration: 415-416. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023.
"Wallen Mapondera’s Conceptual Art: Reflections on Zimbabwe’s November 2017 Bloodless Coup d’etat and Beyond." Third Text 36, no. 2: 107-123, 2022.
Contributor to the following art books
Jamal, Ashraf (ed.) African Art: The ARAK Collection. SKIRA, 2025.
Shinners, Keely (ed.) ArtThrob_: 25 years of art writing in South Africa. ArtThrob_, 2023.
Kouoh, Koyo (ed.) When We See Us: A century of Black figuration in painting. Thames & Hudson, Zeitz MOCAA, 2022.
Okeke-Agulu, Chika, and Underwood, Joseph L (eds.) African Artists: From 1882-Now, 2021.
Catalogues
“UNDONE”. The Pavilion of Zimbabwe, Biennale di Venezia, 2024.
“If These Walls Could Speak”. Mbare Art Space, 2024.
“I did not leave a sign?” The Pavilion of Zimbabwe, Biennale di Venezia, 2022.