Using her self-reflections on her identity and its intersections as a starting point, Linnet Panashe Rubaya is a self-taught British-Zimbabwean figurative artist based in Leeds, born in Harare and raised in London.
Reflecting on her childhood and shared experiences with Black and Asian friends, Linnet's paintings explore the way Blackness means that an understanding of situations often transcends differing cultures and classes to create a new community of sisterhood. This sisterhood allows people to support, challenge and lead each other in ways that defy individualist, capitalist and colonial systems of white supremacy.
During a trip to Nigeria, Panashe Rubaya encountered Aso ebi - a uniform dress traditionally worn in Nigeria and some West African cultures as an indicator of cooperation and solidarity during ceremonies and festive periods.
The artist uses this confluence between dress, celebration and uniform as inspiration, drawing on examples from across diasporic cultures and histories of social justice, with a particular interest in how uniforms are often useful for both celebrations and resistance movements, such as the Black Panthers. Linnet's research led to exploring how breastplates throughout history and fashion are multi-faceted, and have their own place in communicating, constructing and dismantling identities.
As well as research into dress, Linnet's Bluebird I and Bluebird 2 draw on nature for inspiration - in particular the Grandala, a striking blue bird in the thrush family. Linnet was inspired by their colour for the women's armour, but also their instinct to bring others into the fold.
Artists and cinematographers such as Alma Thomas, Zhao Xiaoding and Christopher Doyle have influenced her use of colour as language. Linnet seeks to depict the vibrancy and beauty of the world in spite of misery. Her work echoes Alma Thomas who stated, Through colour, I have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness rather than man's inhumanity to man.