Short for gadziguru, gadzi is the name given to the generative female force present in Zimbabwe’s Shona culture. It is this force that Chipaumire channels through her new creation, which includes an installation echoing the landscape and awe-inspiring Balancing Rocks of her homeland. As a whole, “gadzi” encompasses movement, musical, film and lighting elements to form an immersive experience that audiences are invited to share rather than simply observe. For the multi-award-winning Chipaumire, this is a vital aspect of her practice and a core idea at the heart of what she has conceived for the London museum.

Valentine Umansky, Curator of International Art and the 2026 Infinities Commission at Tate Modern, believes the nature of the award is timely and Nora’s striking work important for its aims. 

“Today, more than ever, it feels essential that museums and galleries invest in living artists,” she says. “The Infinities Commission offers an opportunity to those working with sound, time-based media and live performance to develop something entirely new. Nora is an incredible artist. It was a privilege to work with her and allow her to think through the best possible transposition and expansion of her practice into the Tanks – industrial, concrete spaces that she has transformed into a gathering ground, a space to reflect, dance, listen to music, conspire, plot a revolution, even.”

On that note, I spoke to Chipaumire on Google Meet to ask her about being given the commission and her journey bringing “gadzi” to Tate Modern’s singular interior. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Hi Nora. How has this experience been for you?

The rigour of the logistics of working with such a huge institution has been stunning to me. I mean that in the best way. The scale of it was eye-opening. I’ve been in museums before, but never in this very focused way when you are being commissioned to put on something solidly for the museum. It's bracketed work. But I hope that some of the knowledge or practices that are specific to this performance can cross over. You’ve spent a year thinking, conceiving, building, but is there an afterlife to the work? That’s a whole other way of thinking and learning, which is just starting to kick in. I hope I have another museum commission, because now I feel I have stronger questions to ask. That is a learning curve for me. What kind of questions are useful to a particular situation?

What was your process for creating “gadzi” given the scale of the commission? Was it evolutionary or were your ideas formed from the start?

Tate let you know that you’re being nominated, then of course you forget about it. Then I get a call from Catherine Wood [Interim Director, Tate Modern], and it's like, “Oh, my god. Here we go!” But from the moment Tate let me know that I had been nominated, I knew in my heart that I wanted to do something of a self-portrait, but not in the normal, art-historical sense. I wanted to bring in an aspect of the soil, of what Zimbabwe is to me. I’m spending more and more time in that geography, in the energy of it. I knew I wanted to do something monumental.

How did the physical space of the Tanks [the former power station’s concrete oil stores] impact you? To me, the Tanks, with no daylight, can feel both intimate and vast.

When I went for the site visit, the Tanks felt smaller than I had anticipated. Of course, the Turbine Hall is enormous; it would be like climbing the Alps to take over that space! Yeah, the lack of daylight, the basement feeling—it’s almost like being in a mine or a cave. And the colour is a grey, slate colour. After that visit I knew, in addition to creating a monumentality, I wanted to make the space warm. That question quickly opened up into how do I change a space that is embedded in this historic building, along this historic river [the Thames], in this historic Commonwealth capital. It’s a cold and brutal history. I asked myself how do I come in with a gentility that stands up to the space, the building, the history?

I also asked, how do I make people want to stay in the room? I didn't grow up with museums. I have a way of looking that is very brisk. I move on very quickly. When I am in the national parks or rural villages of Zimbabwe, there is a slowing down of the heart, an emptying out of the manmade and an opening out into nature. I thought, okay, that's the work, to make the heart slow down and to bring this beauty of nature and its extreme abstraction into the space.