Joshua Strydom Džoš
- From
- Zimbabwe
- Based in
- Lisbon
- Practice
- Artist & cultural worker
I am a Zimbabwe-born artist and cultural worker based in Lisbon.
My life has been shaped by movement across borders, and by the way mobility can be both a choice and a condition. Nationality, paperwork, language, and history have all shaped where I can live, how I am read, and what “home” is allowed to mean.
- @strydzo_dzos
- Website
- joshuastrydom.com
Statement
My ongoing series (i’m)migration is my way of thinking through this life in motion. Birds are not symbols I use at random. They are living bodies that navigate distance, season, instinct and survival, and they carry the logic of migration in their physiology. They cross borders without passports, yet their survival is still shaped by human borders, landscapes and policy. This is where my own life sits. I paint each bird from my own photographs, building the image in layers of acrylic and charcoal, and always in transition between standing and flight.
The bird is never only a bird. It is a body navigating distance, a portrait of adaptation, and a way to ask, again and again, what it means to belong when home is not one place, but a pattern of crossings.
Works on show
2 works · from the series (i’m)migration · Journeys, 2026
