Art + Artists

Mahari Chabawera is an independent artist making tapestry paintings at the intersection of mysticism and self-mythologization. She utilizes beads, oil paint, cowrie shells, tempered glass and fabric as painting elements to explore the nature of being, and the function of the self.

Chabwera graduated with her BFA in Painting and Printmaking from VCU in 2017. In 2019 she was awarded the VMFA’s Professional Fellowship and in 2020 she received the Visual Arts Center Emerging Artist Award. 2021 - 2023 Chabwera facilitated Studio House, a work space for artists in East Baltimore that provided housing and professional development opportunities. In support of the project, Chabwera was awarded The Grit Fund from the Peale Museum, and a Maryland State Arts Council Creativity Grant. Chabwera’s work has been acquired by the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, and commissioned by UVA.

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My work confronts the structure and function of the Self. I explore the nature of being as it relates to mythology, earth-based practices and Black women’s wisdom traditions. I combine conventional oil painting materials with non-traditional materials like fabric and glass to create tapestry paintings that personify energy, and speculate about the etheric body.
The ethereal realm is where we exist before we emerge as physical beings. In Opening to Spirit, Caroline Shola Arewa explains that the “etheric level is the home of Ancestors, dreams and the collective unconscious.”

My work explores the idea that the physical is tethered to the ethereal. Employing non-traditional materials as painting elements, I contribute to the legacy of artists like Joyce J. Scott and Faith Ringold who upend hierarchies of contemporary art and craft, through their use of materials and self-referential storytelling. Using upholstery thread I hand-stitch hundreds of glass seed beads to canvas creating personal charms of empowerment and protection. These works are meditations on sacred symbols, celestial bodies, and the cosmos. As a cross-cultural veneration practice, beading expresses organizing principles that charge entire civilizations, and through a repetitive and rhythmic process, has the ability to invoke our human connection to spirit.