Have No Doubt of the Omnipotence of a Free People (2025)

Catinca Tabacaru Gallery’s large-scale, research-driven project, Have No Doubt of the Omnipotence of a Free People, curated by Raphael Guilbert with assistant curators Catinca Tabacaru and Ana Maria Stefan, brings to light a largely overlooked chapter of the Romanian-Zimbabwean relationship—Romania’s active support for anti-colonial liberation movements across Africa, and in particular, its decisive role in Zimbabwe’s struggle for independence throughout the 1970s and leading up to its independence in 1980.

This exhibition brings together 68 artists and situates Romania within a wider global network of post-colonial solidarities, offering new insight into how cultural diplomacy, ideological alliance, and military exchange shaped international relations during the Cold War. Through an extensive body of archival materials—digitized for public access for the first time—alongside historical and contemporary artworks by artists from Zimbabwe and Romania, and first-hand video interviews with veterans of the Zimbabwean Liberation Front, the project advances a revised understanding of Romania’s geopolitical agency and its intersection with African liberation movements, specifically the dissolution of the Rhodesian settler regime and the emergence of independent Zimbabwe.

The exhibition examines how cultural production reflects, archives, and challenges narratives of state ideology and international alignment, bringing together Romanian modernist and neo-avant-garde artists—who defied aesthetic and ideological constraints through deeply personal and experimental practices—and Zimbabwean masters whose work emerged amid the struggle for independence. Alongside them, contemporary artists revisit these intertwined legacies, questioning what remains of the solidarities that once linked the socialist East and the decolonizing South.

By creating a dialogue between contemporary and historic artistic practices, the exhibition reflects on the long-term cultural effects of political solidarity and ideological projection. It explores how artistic vocabularies have both responded to and resisted state narratives, while tracing the ways artists from Romania and Zimbabwe are re-engaging with these legacies today—challenging inherited geopolitical frames, recovering personal and collective memories, and rethinking the entanglements of power, resistance, and trans-regional identity. The interlocking histories of the two countries serve as a bridge for broader conversations about their national pasts, presents, and futures, revealing—through the compounded perspectives of artists across time, geography, and medium—the multiplicity of lived experiences shaped by political and ideological pressure.

In doing so, the exhibition extends its inquiry beyond the historical frame, speaking to the urgency of the present—where the echoes of past solidarities reverberate against ongoing struggles for justice. At a moment when apartheid structures, settler violence, and asymmetries of power continue to define global realities, this reexamination of shared histories becomes not only an act of remembrance but an imperative gesture of solidarity. The exhibition insists on the continued relevance of these connections—reminding us that cultural and political solidarities remain vital tools in confronting enduring systems of domination.