Julio Rizhi (b. 1991), is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe.
After several years of study at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe visual art studio, Julio decided to pursue his own experimental practice, while based at the Chinembiri studios with several of Zimbabwe's leading new generation artists such as Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude, Moffat Takadiwa and Wycliffe Mundopa. Rizhi’s works like him a deeply imbedded in the life of the city building connections between consumption and its outcomes, through the socio-ethical prism of contemporary Zimbabwe.
His dystopic and dysmorphic constructions speak to environmental decay and the social cost of high-density living such as youth unemployment and addiction. Darkly humoured, Rizhi uses the seductively bright colours of the discarded plastics he melts to construct his sculptures, as a metaphor for the broken promises of a better future advertised but never delivered.