Liona Nyariri is a Zimbabwean born visual artist. She completed her BA Fine Arts at the University of Cape Town in 2013. She is currently completing an MFA in Fine Arts at Parsons The New School in New York. At the core of her practice is a deep interest into notions of history, construction, and narrative. Through her formal investigations of materiality, she is interested in the becoming of objects that carry certain weight or baggage/histories. Through the abstraction of these objects, how do they begin to perform as things onto which ideas are projected onto – how do they create meaning and how do they implicate the viewer? These are the questions that she contemplates and is interested in investigating.      

Previously creating performative photographic works that challenged stereotypes, Nyariri explored the origin, influence and validity of these constructions as passed down through history (both social and personal, oral and written). Exploring the past to establish an understanding, she reclaimed a personal authority by virtue of her apparent dismissal of imposed limitations. More recently the artist has shifted focus toward the future, allowing fantasy to dominate her creative pursuits