Makiwa Mutomba is a self-taught Zimbabwean artist who is methodically revolutionising African portraiture. His exhibition Heads is currently running at the KZNSA Gallery.

Makiwa Mutomba uses intense and vibrant colours – applied to canvas with only a palette knife – to depict only black African people. Having exhibited previously at galleries in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana in a series of group and three solo exhibitions, he writes about his work that “the truth is more valuable than what we think we know,” and that “beauty … is abounding in all creation … I will strive to show beauty where there is no beauty, and to show colour where there is only black and white.”

Heads closes at the KZNSA Gallery on September 9.