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Lionel Tazvitya Mbayiwa

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One continent. 54 countries. One stage in London. 🌍✨

This week, @154artfair returns to Somerset House for its 14th London edition, running alongside Frieze. Founded in 2013 by Touria El Glaoui, 1-54 has grown into the leading international fair for contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora, now spanning London, Marrakech and New York.

We’re especially proud to see Zimbabwean-born, Cape Town-based artist Lionel Mbayiwa (@baba_kupa ) showing with @spierartstrust . His bold cubist animals carry the Shona folktales he grew up hearing around the fire. 🐐🐂🐦

Earlier this year, Dallas artists Reuben Cheatem, Ebony Lewis and Andrea Tosten visited Lionel in his Cape Town studio on our reverse excursion. Seeing his work now on one of the art world’s biggest stages is what cultural exchange is all about. 🤝🏾

In London for Frieze? Live in London? Go see it.
📍 Somerset House, Strand
🗓 Through Sunday 18 October

Swipe through for the full story ➡️

#154ArtFair #FriezeLondon #FriezeWeek #ContemporaryAfricanArt #AfricanArt

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In the studio with Lionel Mbayiwa.

Lionel brings his Shona folk tales to Somerset House this week. His animal figures carry stories of power, morality and the journey from Zimbabwe to South Africa.

See them in person at Booth S14, alongside Blessing Blaai and Mellaney Roberts, presented with Nando's. 1-54 London, Somerset House, 15–18 October.

Filmed for Creative Block: Making a Mark, celebrating 23 years of our Creative Block programme.

@baba_kupa @154artfair @nandosuk #154London

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It’s London Art Week, and as we prepare for the opening of 1:54 London, meet the artists we’re exhibiting with Nando’s this year!

Lionel Mbayiwa (1982) was born in Zimbabwe and now lives in Cape Town. Lionel draws on his Shona heritage and the stories of his childhood, using animals as symbols of power and morality. His works explore themes of immigration and identity.

Lionel has participated in multiple group exhibitions, art fairs and projects. Some include the ArtistLab mentorship programme hosted by Latitudes Online (2021). In 2026, he participated in the Investec Cape Town Art Fair with Christopher Moller Gallery and presented his museum exhibition Ndibatewo Ruwoko / Hold My Hand at the Schutz Fine Art Museum in Engelhartszell, Austria.

Come visit us at @154artfair , 15–18 October!

MURUDO MURUDO (IN THE NAME OF LOVE), 2026
ZAMU RANDAKAYANWA (THE BREAST I FEED FROM) II, 2026

@baba_kupa @154artfair @nandosuk #154London #SpierArtsTrust #southafricanartist🇿🇦

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Open Book Festival and a chat with Zimbabwean artist Lionel, Cape Town.

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This is your last chance to visit Wild Things, our current ceramic group exhibition @SpierWineFarm.

Open daily until 24 August.

#ceramicArt #SpierArtTrust #visualLanguage

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A heartfelt thank you to everyone who visited 'Echoes of Home', our group exhibition has now concluded.

To keep exploring the works of @mpho_feni, @baba_kupa, and @olamideogunade, please visit our website.

Looking ahead, our next exhibition 'Control + Z', presented in collaboration with the HEAT Winter Arts Festival, opens 6 August 2026.

We can't wait to share it with you!

🔗 https://www.christophermollerart.co.za/

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'Echoes of Home' by Lionel Mbayiwa.

As the title work of our current group exhibition, 'Echoes of Home', Lionel Mbayiwa's distinctive visual language draws on echoes of Cubism and African modernism, where multiple perspectives unfold within a single composition.

Figures and spaces overlap and transform, creating a layered visual experience that invites viewers to slow down, look closer, and discover new meanings with every encounter.

Showing until 26 July 2026.

Oil and acrylic on canvas (2026)

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What do we pass on to the next generation?

Through his deeply personal exploration of fatherhood, Lionel Mbayiwa reflects on inheritance, responsibility and the legacy we choose to leave behind.

His works invite us to consider not only where we come from, but what will remain long after us.

See Mbayiwa's work in ‘Echoes of Home’, now showing at Christopher Moller Gallery until 24 July 2026.

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Family, Heritage and Identity!

'Echoes of Home' brings together three artists from across the African continent whose works explore these ideas through very different visual languages and lived experiences.

Mpho Feni, Lionel Mbayiwa and Olamide Ogunade each reflect on what it means to carry heritage, memory and personal history within an increasingly contemporary and interconnected world.

@mpho_feni
@baba_kupa
@olamideogunade

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Lionel and Hugh Mbayiwa are a clear example of why and how the Christopher Moller Gallery is a maverick in the South African art world!

A relationship with the gallery that spans over 24 years, starting with Hugh and continuing with Lionel.
Hugh Mbayiwa was amidst the initial few that were represented by our gallery. A brother, a father, a teacher and a connoisseur at landscaping with mixed media and oil on canvas, suspending ‘time’ in idyllic ‘country’ scenes. In his last exhibition with the Christopher Moller Gallery: ‘Time and Country’ he noted that he chooses to 'interpret Africa on her smiling day', that at which he succeeds formidably.

Hugh came through to our gallery supporting his younger brother Lionel Mbayiwa, whose work is featuring in our current 'Echoes of Home' exhibition' - a three-man exhibition including gallery represented artists Mpho Feni and Olamide Ogunade.

Lionel Mbayiwa, once student to his brother and now internationally acclaimed artist, carries the baton. Through his ‘Heritage’ and ‘Dream’ series, contrastingly to his brother, Lionel’s work is an evolving system of storytelling. Preserving the cornerstone of ancient African civilisations and oral storytelling through the visual storybook of his current bodies of work.

@hughmbayiwa
@babakupart

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🎨 Step into the world of 𝗟𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝗠𝗯𝗮𝘆𝗶𝘄𝗮, one of three incredible artists featured in our current exhibition, Echoes of Home: Family, Heritage and Identity Across Africa (on view until 24 July).

Drawing from Shona cosmology and oral tradition, Mbayiwa's figures move between past and present, acting as intermediaries between ancestral knowledge and contemporary life.

His work reminds us that heritage isn't frozen in time, it's a living, breathing compass guiding us through the complexities of the modern world.

In a landscape shaped by global noise and shifting identities, his art asks us to look inward and remember what we carry.

Come experience the echoes.

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This my first solo show ever showing @alliancefrancaiseducap called Zambuko/Bridge its running till thr 28th of June 2026.

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