Chiedza Pasipanodya is a Zimbabwean-Canadian sculptor, writer and curator who investigates material logic and temporality, and challenges notions of subjectivity through a post-minimalist lens.
Drawing from African diasporic aesthetics and metaphysical inquiry, they create sculptures and installations, explore how objects are vessels for lived histories, perceptual shifts, and cultural transmission, and invite audiences to reconsider the meanings of objects, materials and sites. Pasipanodya’s notable exhibitions and installations include Dura | a mechanism for recalling sensibilities of community care, Fort York Historic Site, BAND Gallery, Toronto, CA (2024); Ndafunga Dande (Thoughts of Home), Art Gallery of Burlington, Burlington, CA (2023); Control, Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, Bucharest, RO (2024); New Forms: that which constitutes (critical) matter, Artspeak, Vancouver, CA (2023), and Genealogies of Sustenance, The Gardiner Museum, Toronto, CA (2024). They are the recipient of numerous scholarships and awards, including the Cranbrook Art Museum, Purchase Award (2025).
Pasipanodya received their MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Arts and BFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practices from OCAD University, where they researched Black Canadian artistic lineages and long-term cultural engagement. They have participated in artist residencies at the Watershed Centre for Ceramic Arts (USA), Dzimbanhete Arts and Cultural Interactions (Zimbabwe), and the Global Experience Project: Maria Thereza Alves (Italy).
Writing
Pasipanodya is the author of grace: Notes on Survival (Sorplusi Press, 2014) and recently released, The Sweet Spot (Hush Harbour Press, 2025), their sophomore collection of poetry and photographs. This title unfolds a wave of actions, observations, dreams, premonitions, and one-line capsules. Each measure of verse acts as a sensual invitation to find one's center after swinging from one side of the pendulum to the other. They have been published in Canadian Art, Macleans, Akimbo, Westend Phoenix and Art Momentum, and contributed to Water, Kinship, Belief: Toronto Biennial of Art 2019-2022 (Art Metropole/ Toronto Biennial of Art, 2022) and Impact: Women and Concussion (University of Alberta Press, 2021).
Curatorial
Shaped by migration and alternative spiritual traditions, Pasipanodya has cultivated a deep interest in the metaphysical and the unseen, informing a material practice attentive to the ways that time, matter, and meaning interrelate. This sensibility is carried into their curatorial work, which centers the poetic and philosophical dimensions of art-making. Curatorial projects include OHAYO Radio!, Ino Cho Paper Museum, Japan (2024) and We might listen for the shimmerings, Toronto Biennial of Art, Canada (2022). Pasipanodya received the Toronto Biennial of Art Curatorial Fellowship (2022) and is a GOG Award recipient for the curation and exhibition design of Tim Whiten: Elemental: Earthen (2023), an exhibition that reflects resonant thematic concerns around embodiment, transformation, and the elemental.