I titled this work Ukuthandwa, which translates as “to be loved.” I chose that phrase because it sits in the middle of a question I return to again and again. What does it mean to be held, not just by a person, but by a place, a memory, a history, a body, a way of moving through the world?
Love is often spoken about as something active, something you do. But being loved is different. It is receptive. It asks for surrender. It asks for trust. It asks you to believe you are allowed to soften without losing your strength.
That tension between softness and strength is where this piece lives for me.
I grew up in Zimbabwe and have spent much of my adult life moving across countries. When you move frequently, “home” becomes less about a fixed location and more about the things that travel with you. The nervous system. The instincts. The patterns you repeat. The way you scan a room. The way you settle, or do not settle. Over time, belonging stops being a simple fact and becomes something you build, piece by piece.
This painting is part of that building.
It is not really a sentimental work for me. It is more like a statement. A quiet insistence that tenderness is not weakness, and that care can be direct. That you can be grounded and open at the same time. That you can carry the intensity of your history without letting it harden you.
Ukuthandwa is also about scale, but not in the visual sense. In the emotional sense. How certain moments expand inside us. How memory edits reality. How the mind keeps what it needs and exaggerates what it cannot fully resolve. I am interested in that space where the real world and the inner world overlap, where something ordinary can become symbolic without trying.
The title is a reminder, and also a challenge.
To be loved means letting yourself be seen without performance. It means staying present even when your instinct is to protect. It means allowing goodness to reach you, and not only surviving it, but receiving it.
That is what I was thinking about while making this work. Not love as an idea, but love as a practice of both giving and receiving.
