Inside nora chipaumire's Tate Modern commission
The Zimbabwean-born artist's latest commission transforms Tate Modern's East Tank into a living, breathing world of ancient land, dub bass and feminine power.
There is something ancestral about stepping into gadzi. The newest Infinities Commission at Tate Modern, created by multi-award-winning artist nora chipaumire, fills the museum's East Tank with the granite, red soil and vast sky of Zimbabwe. Titled after gadziguru, the oldest and most powerful feminine presence in Shona legend, the installation combines sculpture, sound system and a spiritual act.
Born in 1965 in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, chipaumire has spent decades refusing categorisation — making work that moves freely between dance, opera, film and installation, carrying what she calls a punk resistance into every form she touches. In gadzi, those instincts come together. Visitors are invited not simply to look, but to move through sculptural forms, to rest against speakers and surrender to a bass frequency that doesn't just fill the room, but inhabits it.
nora chipaumire 2016 © Boyle
“It’s a gesture I’m offering — a gesture to save the energy of the landscape, to move this energy, and to protect it.”
chipaumire draws a deliberate line between the African roots of dub's subterranean bass culture and the geological and spiritual power of stone in Zimbabwean tradition. Accompanying film elements layer shifting light and visions of feminine presence within nature onto the sculptural environment, deepening the work's meditation on land, ancestry and creation.
The installation comes alive on select June dates through live performances in which chipaumire leads a procession through the gallery alongside fellow artists. Guitars, saxophone and electronics weaving with hoshos, mbiras, and ngomas, the traditional instruments of the Shona people. A special edition of Tate Lates on 26 June will also spill into the Turbine Hall, where chipaumire's mountainous speaker installation — designed with Ari Marcopoulos and Kara Walker — celebrates the enduring legacy of sound system culture.
Infinities Commission: nora chipaumire: gadzi is supported by Glass Castle Foundation. It is curated by Valentine Umansky, Curator, International Art and Francis Hardy, Assistant Curator, International Art, and produced by Nancy Cooper, Production Manager: Commissions.
Infinities Commission: nora chipaumire: gadzi is open at Tate Modern until 23rd August 2026.