The Rise of Contemporary Art in Zimbabwe – introduction to an enigma

Valerie Kabov

Published in Something We Africans Got, Issue 7, February 2019

Over the last decade, Zimbabwean contemporary art has undergone a remarkable
transformation. After more than a decade of economic adversity and political
stagnation, which left local art scene isolated and under-resourced, the small but
resilient art community rebounded with a verve for international engagement.
Aspiring artists from around the country came to Harare for training mainly at the two
key art schools, National Gallery Visual Art Studio and Harare Polytechnic, making
the capital a focal point for contemporary art in the country. To support the efforts of
the historical stalwart Gallery Delta, new experimental spaces focused on supporting
local artists at the grassroots emerged such as First Floor Gallery Harare, Village
Uhnu Collective. The National Gallery of Zimbabwe spearheaded international
engagement with the Zimbabwe Venice Biennale Pavilion, which has been staged
continuously since 2011, while First Floor Gallery Harare began a regular
programme of international art fair participation in 2012, creating consistent and high
quality engagement with international art audiences with Village Unhu following suit
as a platform hosting exchanges.

While this flowering echoes that of other countries on the continent, Zimbabwe in
many ways is a unique case. A small country, with a population of 14 million, with
almost 68% of the population rural, emerging from a period of dire economic
straights, not much of an art market to speak of, no international quality tertiary art
teaching institutions. And yet the end of the second decade of the 21st century sees
Zimbabwean contemporary art punching well above its weight in the international
ranks, with numerous artists of the younger generation represented in major
museums and international biennales, among them Misheck Masamvu, Moffat
Takadiwa, Portia Zvavahera, Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude, Gareth Nyandoro, Wycliffe
Mundopa and Virginia Chihota.

What then are the forces shaping this success and what are its origins?

Zimbabwe’s contemporary art tradition has had a number of beginnings and its story
is told in many different ways, with a mix of colonial, post-independence movements
and influences in the fray. However in many ways this story pivots on the role of
individuals and economics in a small place and a culture that has created a fertile
ground for visual imagination and storytelling.

The more conventionally euro-centric historical view is that the missionaries Canon
Paterson who founded Cyrene Mission School in 1939 in Bulawayo, and Father
Groeger, founder of Serima Mission introduced modern painting in Zimbabwe. At
both schools they taught young men painting skills with a view to decorating
churches and religious paraphernalia in the belief that given the opportunity African
artists could reach the same heights as Europeans. Later in 1957 Frank McEwan,
the first Director of the National Gallery of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in Harare
established the studio workshop, sponsored by British American Tobacco, which
fostered the stone sculpture practice alongside painting, which produced notable
artists, of international repute and resulted in an exhibition at the MoMA, called ‘New
Painting from Rhodesia’ in 1968 following a visit to Zimbabwe by Alfred Barr, the first
director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. It included works by Thomas
Mukarobgwa, Joseph Ndandarika and Kingsley Sambo.
However independence proved a significant rupture in the development of
contemporary art. As artists and artworks sponsored by the colonial endeavours
losing favour there emerging a need for newer forms and movements for a young
country, where resources to fund the arts were not readily available. In this context
individuals also played a crucial role in keeping the art sector and young artists alive
during difficult times.

Particularly crucial to the emergence of an independent contemporary art scene in

Zimbabwe centred on Harare are the elder pillars of contemporary art Helen Leiros,
and Tapfuma Gutsa. Both represent the points of origin for contemporary art
movement, which can be called the Harare School. Their work augmented by the
inspirational flurry of activity produced at the Harare Polytechnic Fine Art Department
by Chiko Chazunguza and Cosmas Shiridzinomwa, who infected their students with
a mission to think through their practices and be driven by ideas in their work.

The work of Helen Leiros as a teacher and director with her husband Derek Huggins,
the founder in 1975 of Gallery Delta spans both education and sustainability. As
Zimbabwe’s economy plunged into dire straights in the first decade of this century, it
was Delta Gallery’s singular effort, which enabled contemporary art to survive even
as the National Gallery of Zimbabwe floundered for several years without a
permanent curator. Helen’s hand is evident in the push to practice of all the artists
now their mid to late-30s and achieving international recognition, Lovemore
Kambudzi, Misheck Masamvu, Gareth Nyandoro, Admire Kamudzengerere, Richard
Mudariki, Virginia Chihota and Portia Zvavahera.

Leiros passion for teaching and painting, preserved the history and respect for the
medium in a country, where it was perhaps the most difficult medium to even
attempt. Artists like Thomas Mu, Luis Meque, Thakor Patel and others remained
relevant and influential for the young artist community and inspirational, despite the
difficulties of obtaining materials and shortage of educational expertise. When
making one painting can cost the same as the artist’s monthly rent, the choice
between painting and eating becomes a real one. Capitulating to these economics,
art schools such as the National Gallery Visual Art Studio or Harare Polytechnic have
resorted to teaching painting with acrylics and in some cases, even poster paints and
focusing on more accessible media like card-print and found object sculpture.
Nonetheless, many persevered.

Through the works Misheck Masamvu, Virginia Chihota, Gareth Nyandoro and Portia
Zvavahera, international audiences have come to know new Zimbabwean painting.
These break out artists created the image of the new painting movement as
punctuated with powerful metaphoric figuration and bold gestural statements in
preference to finer detail. Although it is hard to speak about a ‘Harare School’ or a
movement emerging, this ethos of place also informs the works of their younger
colleagues, although each is making their own very distinct thematic imprint.

Over the past several years, the strength of painting in Zimbabwe has been
cemented by a number of new artists forging ahead but also collaborating and
mentoring those coming up behind them. Among them Wycliffe Mundopa, Gresham
Tapiwa Nyaude, Mavis Tauzeni and Helen Teede are standing out for both their
passion for their country and their own field of expressive commentary. For
Mundopa, “This suffering is what makes us,” is a motto and the sentiment pulsates in
each of his paintings, which make theatre of the underbelly of Harare’s high-density
areas and pain-points. Drawing out his admiration for the Dutch Masters, Mundopa
makes us feel that if they had lived in Harare today, this is exactly what their
paintings would look like.

No less informed by the drama and trauma of daily life in Harare but more satirically
motivated, Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude’s practice is the epitome of the tongue-in-cheek
street smarts that characterise the ‘ghetto ethos’ of his native Mbare. Visually
translating slang and vernacular, Nyaude works in waves to create series of
obsessive, thematic paintings, exorcising each subject to exhaustion before
subjecting a new victim to his keen wit. Conversely Helen Teede, while on the
surface a unique outlier as an abstractionist, on closer observation is an artist who
immerses herself in the landscape of her country enabling it to become a crucible for
social commentary and a setting for political and cultural dismay.

The trio of oil-paint purists is joined by Mavis Tauzeni, who uses painting together
with card-print and other forms mark making including sewing and stitching to
created distinctly feminine directions amid a highly testosterone driven field. Her
canvasses are immersed in the unsettling stillness of introspection and waters that
run deep. Deeply personal, Tauzeni’s imagery oscillates between the surreal,
futuristic and dreamy and has created a space for other young women artists like
Miriro Mwandiambira, Kresia Mukwazhi and Shalom Kufah to experiment beyond
traditional media and work in particular with materials relevant to lives of young
women in the country.

Turning to sculpture, Tapfuma Gutsa’s influence is tangible across generations as a

role model in career sense but also in terms of innovation and insight into material
properties of materials. The first to break away from the yoke of the Frank Ewen
school of stone carving, which has dominated the practice of sculpture in the country
for decades, by getting a scholarship in 1982 to study in England. While
internationally trained, Gutsa’s practice remained firmly rooted in Shona tradition and
spirituality, which pervades the culture’s interaction with objects, nature, music and
art-making. Introducing novel materials to the practice of sculpture opened the door
for younger artists not only to experiment but also to move beyond the merely
anthropomorphic approach to sculpting and incorporating metaphysical and
conceptual elements within abstraction.

And it is through Gutsa influence that we can understand the extraordinary feature of
emerging art in Zimbabwe, being how easily emerging artists of the country dove-
tailed with issues of conceptual practice and philosophy of their western peers,
notwithstanding the immense infrastructure and resource disparity. However this
history alone cannot explain the level of talent and quality of art production in
Zimbabwe; these are contiguous with and true property of the culture, values and
passions of the people and the times they live in.

At its core, Zimbabwean and Shona culture in particular is characterised by an ability

to appraise life philosophically, with a measure of detachment and a big picture view.
This culture manifests in many aspects of Zimbabwean tradition, from the immense
importance of avoiding conflict and preserving social relationships, to the
sophistication and conceptual structuring of Zimbabwean proverbs, monotheistic
spirituality and belief in the sacredness of human life. This culture underpins the
incredible perseverance and optimism of Zimbabwean people and continues to
inform the new generation of artists across all media.

In sculpture the outcomes have been most startling, younger artists like Masimba
Hwati and Moffat Takadiwa with Gutsa’s lead pivoting away from figuration and
mythology of stone sculpture towards metaphor, idiom and symbolic use of materials.
Takadiwa in particular from 2010 onwards developed a coherent practice in
conversation, with his materials and their use and abuse in daily urban lives of
Zimbabweans. Using garbage dumps as source for his materials, Takadiwa emerged
with a new language, where found objects became intimate partners in story telling,
with his most internationally acclaimed works being vast panneux made up of
computer keyboards, assembled with intricacy of Persian carpets and shaped in
patterns simultaneous ancient and expressively contemporary.

Younger sculptors like Wallen Mapondera, Takunda Regis Billiat, Troy Makaza and
Julio Rizhi, took on this new approach with gusto, each evolving his own unique
relationship with chosen materials and themes. For Mapondera it is based on fabrics,
strings and cardboard, for Billiat it is cow horns and hooves and telephone receivers,
books and beads, wire and repurposed textiles, for Makaza it is intensely vibrant
woven and cast silicone and for Rizhi it is the seductively luminescent molten plastic.
Each artist and material delivering complex narratives of a culture and society in flux.

Another unique feature of the tiny Zimbabwean contemporary artist community is that
virtually every artist who has found international success in the past decade, has
done so, while remaining resident in the country and making the decision to stay
despite success. This incredible and courageous loyalty, has also meant that the
older artists are there to mentor and support the younger generation by example and
through direct mentorship in a country, where there are so few practicing artists over
the age of fifty.

Established artists have taken up the challenge of mentoring the younger generation
of artists to compensate for challenges of their circumstances, with new impressive
talents such as Amanda Mushate, emerging under the mentorship of Gresham
Tapiwa Nyaude and Epheas Maposa, under the wing of Misheck Masamvu and
Admire Kamudzengerere establishing a studio project called Animal Farm hosting
numerous, young artists.

This is by far not an exhaustive survey of an incredibly rich movement, which has
made Harare a tiny art El Dorado for international gallerists and collectors. The
commitment and perseverance of contemporary artists in Zimbabwe to succeed and
to succeed on their own terms is exemplar. This has been an invitation, to delve
under the cover of preconceptions, stereotypes and misdirections, in order to begin
developing an approach towards understanding the factors shaping this remarkable
contemporary art moment.