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Shona Sculpture and Documenta 11 Reflections on Exclusions

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Shona Sculpture and Documenta 11 Reflections on Exclusions JONATHAN ZILBERG Shona Sculpture and documenta 11 Reflections on Exclusions HIS ESSAY EXAMINES ISSUES ofinclusionlexclusion and ofauthenticity T as they concern the Shona sculpture phenomenon. The argument first pro­ vides some reflection upon the traditionalist versus modernist presentation of artists and upon the variable recognition of their work. It then briefly explores the history of the mystic representation of contemporary Zimbabwean stone sculpture as a 'tribal art.' The article goes on to situate the genre in terms of the larger reception of contemporary African and ethnic arts and raises the question of how the apparent exclusion of Shona sculpture from documenta 11 and other prestigious art shows will be understood by critics and art historians, who might approve of such exclu­ sion or, as advocates, might also seek greater recognition for Shona art in such sym­ bolic and high profile venues. Let us begin, however, with arecent critical encounter in Venice. Critical reflections The art critic Thomas McEvilley was walking along the cornice ofthe Gardini at the Venice Biennale with the Ivoirean painter Taessir Dia when, gazing across the water towards the horizon, Dia suddenly remarked: As the light gets long over the lagoon and I gaze over the waters at Venice, I try to see it as Turner would have seen it. As I walk along here, I try to imagine what Leo­ nardo would have feit like as he walked these streets, what he might have worn, what 102 ANNETTE CZEKELJUS ~ might have caught his eye. What a wonderful privilege to be in the same city where Leonardo lived! I And then, in a phrase typically heard in colonial Rhodesia about the Shona people, their ancestors and the structures of Great Zimbabwe, Dia reversed racist European perceptions of Africans in a stunning turn. He wondered aloud about the apparent degeneration of the Italians today compared to their famous ancestors. How was it possible, he mused, that the same people could possibly have created these extra­ ordinary artworks that remain from the Renaissance? McEvilley interpreted this move as areversal of common Orientalist and colonial patterns of judgement. For hirn, Dia's comment evinces how the tide has turned so that the former categories of centre and periphery, colonizer and colonized, civilized and primitive, are now being subverted. Beyond such strategies of transgression, this scene in Venice is also symbolic of the increasing recognition given to modem African artists in the last decade. According to McEvilley, artists like Ouattara and Ivoirian Gerard Santoni see them­ selves as international figures in a global and post-colonial arena and not specifically as African artists. This marks a crucial difference for the Shona case considered in this essay. Although some notable Zimbabwean stone sculptors such as Tapfuma Gutsa or the late John and Bernard Takawira, on occasion, have complained that their seulpture is not redueible to some ethnie eategory, the vast majority of Shona sculptors understand themselves to be ethnic artists in the most essentialized under­ standing ofthis term. While an artist such as Santoni relates to McEvilley that it does not make sense to see his painting as specifically African, and while the inirnitable Yinka Shonibare responds to the question of where Africa or his Y oruba-ness rnight be located in his work with the blunt comment "I don't give a toss about Africa,,,2 the classical idea of an authentie Shona sculpture explicitly depends upon the opposite assumption. The art historian Olu Oguibe may have argued that the topic of authenticity is of no concern to African artists themselves but merely a source of anxiety to outsiders who construct such categories,3 and many African artists may indeed be gaining recognition outside ethnic frameworks; the majority of the Zimbabwean sculptors, I Thomas McEvelly, "Fusion: Hot or Cold," in Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to Marketplace, ed. Olu Oguibe & Okwui Enwezor (London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 1999): 9. 2 Quoted according to John Picton, "Yinka Shonibare. Undressing Ethnicity," African Arts 34.3 (2001): 61. 3 Olu Oguibe, "Art, Identity, Boundaries: Postmodernist and Contemporary African Art," in Oguibe & Enwezor, ed. Reading the Contemporar, 27. .
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