Artist Biography

Gillian Rosselli (b. 1962 in Masvingo, Zimbabwe) represented Zimbabwe at the 2024 Venice Biennale - a milestone that reflects her standing as a strong and significant voice in Zimbabwean contemporary art. Based between Harare and Vienna, Rosselli's painting practice spans figuration and abstraction, shaped by a vivid inner life and keen sensitivity to the socio-political currents of our time.

Her impulse-led approach to abstraction uses colour, atmosphere, and rhythm as vessels for memory and place. As Zimbabwean curator Greg Shaw recites, Rosselli’s practice is underpinned by a conscious letting go. Through material and process, she arrives at works that are not rigidly formal, but impulse-led abstraction, emotionally and psychologically driven. The themes she engages with embody an openness to the journey described above: transformation, rebirth, cyclical identity, with narrative undercurrents. Her work is characterised by sensitivity to materials, repetition, and rhythm. Through layered paint and sensitive mark-making, Rosselli connects her visual language to global discourses on identity, queerness, narrative, and memory.

Rosselli studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Michaelis School of Fine Arts, Cape Town (1980-1984). With nine solo exhibitions to date, her work is held in public and private collections worldwide, including the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, the Royal Embassy of the Netherlands (Harare), the University of Cape Town (UCT), Anglo American, and Mobil Oil.

Her career has been recognized with numerous awards, including the overall award of distinction for painting in Zimbabwe (1995). Notable exhibitions include Five Bhobh - Painting At the End of an Era at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town (2018); Hunyanzvi (Mastery) - a group exhibition featuring works by ten leading Zimbabwean artists at Galerie Grisebach, Zurich (2025); and the solo as for me at the Arches at Aberfoyle, Honde Valley, Zimbabwe (2026). Rosselli has also shown at AKAA, Paris (2024) and at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town (2025).