Chiedza Pasipanodya has work reserved by the National Gallery of Canada; joins Worlding’s London residency
Zalucky Contemporary booth at Art Toronto, 2026. Chiedza Pasipanodya, Untitled (Inside Pomongwe) is featured center right. Courtesy Zalucky Contemporary.
Cranbrook alumna Chiedza Pasipanodya (MFA Sculpture 2025) has a sculpture reserved for the collection of the National Gallery of Canada and was selected for Worlding’s annual Toronto-focused residency in London in April 2027. The announcements arrive while Pasipanodya is exhibiting in the 2026 Toronto Biennial of Art, Things Fall Apart, which is on view through December 20, 2026.
Chiedza Pasipanodya next to her Untitled (Inside Pomongwe), 2026. Courtesy of the artist National Gallery of Canada.
The National Gallery of Canada reserved Untitled (Inside Pomongwe) (2026) at Art Toronto and is in the process of acquiring it, with support from the RBC Emerging Artists Acquisition Fund. The work is made of bamboo cotton, iron oxide, salt, and steel and measures 135 by 191 by 183 centimeters. The gallery describes Pasipanodya’s sculptural works as exploring how objects carry personal histories, changes in perception, and cultural traditions, and says that acquisitions like this one help build a collection that reflects Canada today.
Worlding’s residency is offered in partnership with the Toronto Biennial of Art, which draws its artists from past and present editions, and it gives the resident an opportunity to connect the London experience back to Toronto through Biennial programming. Pasipanodya will be in residence in April 2027.
The Biennial marks a full-circle moment in Pasipanodya’s career. They first worked with the organization as a Public Programming and Learning Curatorial Assistant through an OCAD University Career Launcher placement, then became an inaugural Curatorial Fellow in 2022, when they curated Ngozi: We Might Listen for the Shimmerings with artists Timothy Yanick Hunter, Anne Zanele Mutema, and Buhlebezwe Siwani across three Biennial sites. This year, curator Allison Glenn selected Pasipanodya as an exhibiting artist. Their presentation at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, in the University of Toronto Art Centre, includes Machuma | The Cradle (2026), Chipeneti (Pin) (2025), Mauuyu (2025), and an untitled work from 2025.
Born in Harare, Zimbabwe, Pasipanodya is a sculptor, writer, and curator whose practice investigates material culture, diasporic memory, and the transformative potential of ritual and form. Working through a post-minimalist lens and drawing on Afro-diasporic and speculative frameworks, they explore how objects become vessels for lived histories, perceptual shifts, and cultural transmission. Clay, informed by African pottery, is a frequent medium, which they have described as a tool for translation, recording, and remembering.
Cheidza Pasianodya, Kunyoresa (Scores),” 2024. Clay, soda-fire glaze, stainless steel. Photo by Daniel Ribar.
At Cranbrook, Pasipanodya received the 2025 Cranbrook Art Museum Purchase Award for Kunyoresa (Scores), which entered the museum’s permanent collection, along with the Robert C. Larson Venture Award, the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts Award, and the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation Materials Fund. Their work has been shown at the Gardiner Museum, BAND Gallery and Fort York Historic Site in Toronto, the Art Gallery of Burlington, Artspeak in Vancouver, and Catinca Tabacaru Gallery in Bucharest, and with Hannah Traore Gallery in New York.
Pasipanodya also works as a curator and writer. They received a Galleries Ontario award for curating and designing Tim Whiten: Elemental: Earthen at the Art Gallery of Peterborough in 2023, and they are the author of grace: Notes on Survival and The Sweet Spot (Hush Harbour Press, 2025). They serve as Executive Director of Xpace Cultural Centre in Toronto and hold a BFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practices from OCAD University.
Learn more:
Chiedza Pasipanodya – Toronto Biennial of Art
