Transforming African Modernism: 25 Years of Zimbabwe Stone Sculpture
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Transforming African Modernism 25 Years of Zimbabwe Stone Sculpture (1980–2005) Transforming African Modernism 25 Years of Zimbabwe Stone Sculpture (1980–2005) September 20–November 3, 2013 Opening Reception: September 20, 6–8 pm SOUTH SHORE ART CENTER Cohasset, MA, www.ssac.org 1 EXHIBITION SPONSORS CONTENTS Major support for this exhbition was generously provided by: Acknowledgments 4 Susan Dickie About the Exhibition 5 Transforming African Modernism: 25 Years of Zimbabwe Stone Sculpture (1980–2005) 6 BJ and Steve Andrus A Short History of Zimbabwe Stone Sculpture 8 About the Art Form 13 Art in the Exhibition 11 – 24 About the Stones 25 Sculpture on cover and title page: Women, Nicholas Mukomberanwa, The Tonga Spirit, Joseph Muzondo 2 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABOUT THE EXHIBITION Russell Schneider, Curator South Shore Art Center is pleased to present Transforming African Modernism: 25 After Zimbabwe achieved independence in 1980, the doors of the new country were Sculpture Artists Works on Paper Artists Years of Zimbabwe Stone Sculpture (1980-2005). When Russell Schneider proposed flung wide open to the art world. The First Generation artists (1940s and 1950s) Fanizani Akuda Chikonzero Chazunguza the exhibition, the Art Center’s exhibition committee was unanimous in its decision (those who were instrumental in the early development of the art form) became Dominic Benhura Peter Clarke to bring such outstanding international work to the South Shore community. As an ‘discovered’, subjected to critical acclaim, and thrust into art careers, some highly Lameck Bonjisi Azaria Mbatha educational organization, we are particularly pleased to show work from another successful. The “Second Generation” artists, inspired by the artworks and early suc- Arthur Fata John Muafangejo country and continent; enabling our students, members, and visitors to learn about cesses of their predecessors, continued to move the art form into new and excit- Tapfuma Gutsa Joseph Muzondo these artists who work in stone sculpture, as well as the tools and methods they use. ing directions that captivated art lovers and critics internationally. This exhibition Chituwa Jemali Richard Rhode features works from artists of the first, second, and third generation of Zimbabwean Colleen Madamombe Peter Sibeko We are grateful to Russell who has spent years collecting the work and is eager to Stone Sculptors. Damian Manuhwa share his knowledge of the craft and we are indebted to Brenda Danilowitz for her Bernard Manyandure fine scholarship in writing the catalog text. Transforming African Modernism: 25 years of Zimbabwe Stone Sculpture (1980- Eddie Masaya 2005) posed several curatorial challenges. First, twenty-five years is a long time. Bernard Matemara We thank the SSAC Board of Directors and exhibition committee for their enthusiastic The challenge was not so much what to include, but what to leave out. It is inevitable, Bryn Mteki support of this exhibition and also our exhibition sponsors: Panopticon Imaging, given the physical limitations of the display space, that some artists and artworks Sylvester Mubayi Susan Dickie, and BJ & Steve Andrus for their dedication to our mission and their that should have been included in the show are not. Second, much of the distribution Cosmos Muchenje generosity. of the artists’ works over the years was done by diverse individuals with little record Nicholas Mukomberanwa keeping by the artists themselves. Exhibition histories and artist biographies are Henry Munyaradzi It is our great privilege to share the work of these Zimbabwean artists with you. therefore woefully incomplete. Joseph Mutasa Joseph Muzondo Sarah Hannan The works of over two dozen artists are represented here. The exhibition has been Joseph Ndandarika Executive Director selected and organized to show a timeline in the development of the art form. There- Bernard Takawira South Shore Art Center fore, although some artists have several works in the exhibition, there has been no John Takawira intention to feature any one artist or artist style. Some of the artists have simple Ndale Wilo styles and some complex. Some of the artists are inspired by nature, human emo- No Looking Back, 2002, Joseph Mutasa tion, or family motifs, while others are politically inspired. Although the artists were Black serpentine, 32 x 16 x 10 in at the time of the artwork’s creation all living or working in Zimbabwe, they represent 140 lbs a diverse group of people with different artistic goals. 4 5 TRANSFORMING AFRICAN MODERNISM: modernist works of the Zimbabwean artists of the 1960s and 70s with their emphasis five life-size forms wrapped in fabric and bound with strips of bark. “The spectacle on form, truth to materials, and the seductive beauty of highly polished stone. “Over of death in Africa,” he told Huggins. “Ethiopian famine and the Rwanda genocide… 25 YEARS OF ZIMBABWE STONE SCULPTURE (1980-2005) the years I’ve been trying, even consciously, to move out of the mainstream of the the forms are corpses…or they are sleeping forms waiting for life. There is genesis Brenda Danilowitz stone sculpture movement … I would like my work to be seen as an attempt to break … death and recreation and regeneration all the time, at every moment.” Thus Gutsa new ground,” he said in 1998. acknowledges the universal cycle of death and rebirth within which the specific Af- rican experience of life and death is located, by drawing attention to the paradoxes In 1989 Tapfuma Gutsa was one of a handful of artists from Africa whom curator Grace that coexist in his reality—the crap and the fertility. Stanislaus selected to exemplify the theme of a major exhibition at the Studio Muse- um in Harlem—“Contemporary African Art: Changing Traditions.” Since then, Gutsa’s In the tall stately figure titled “The Cathedral,” Gutsa juxtaposes a blue gray stone work has fulfilled its promise of artistic toughness and invention that was presaged with roughly carved wooden spires. In one view, perhaps the front of the figure, the “Modern art in Africa is vital, marked by its movement. It will not stop still so that we the stone. The top heavy configuration of this piece sets up a condition of fragility in the works shown at the Studio Museum, which accepted, and simultaneously set stone appears as the fusion of two figures with the wood attachments seeming to be can attempt to place it in categories.” within the monumentality of the stone—the notion that the power within can easily out to challenge, conventions of Zimbabwe sculpture. two heads. A couple? Perhaps. Seen from the opposite side, the couple fuses into a —Philip Ravenhill be undone and toppled. What is ultimately most significant about Mukomberanwa’s single figure, its full curved “hips” suggesting decidedly female outlines. Here the achievement and that of many of the younger artists who followed him, is that he In the mid-1990s Gutsa began to push his challenge to the pureness and integrity of smooth almost lyrical gray stone has been hacked away, exposing the interior—like a 1980, the year Zimbabwe was born as an independent post-colonial state, marked was able to combine the modernist ideas of pure form and truth to materials—first stone beyond what others could imagine. Working a single piece of stone to produce flayed body, exposing a powerful duality of gender and emotion. a milestone for the country’s contemporary art. Independence brought new oppor- presented to him in European examples—with the core of his own experience, to pro- differentiations in textures and color was one thing, but creating assemblages of tunities and wider horizons as the western art world began to turn its gaze on newly duce a new tradition of African art. More important than the example of Western multiple stones and combining these with other materials both natural and man- Cosmos Muchenje, working on a smaller scale in the piece “Torso,” achieves a fluidity emerging countries around the globe. This exhibition, Transforming African Mod- artists’ work, Mukomberanwa’s mentor, Frank McEwen instilled in him the notion of made—wood, bones, and metals was entirely another. His aim was to create work that of form and dappled color that embodies the universal ideal of the female nude. Like ernism: 25 years of Zimbabwe Stone Sculpture (1980-2005), covers the twenty-five the unique work of art. Later the artist would recall the importance of this lesson in engaged and challenged, rather than simply pleased and delighted, his audience. Joseph Muzondo, Muchenje worked as a painter in two-dimensions, before turning years that followed independence. It presents Zimbabwean sculptors in a new light, innovation and creativity—the injunction “never to repeat.” “Beautiful stones don’t speak back …I think if you want to get to people’s hearts and to sculpture. This contributes to the sensitivity to color and texture apparent in his juxtaposing works by the “masters” of the 1960s generation with those of younger minds you don’t want to dole out the whole thing in one sitting. You need somebody work. Because it has neither head, nor complete limbs,” Torso “ remains a fragment. artists. Rooted in the artists’ worlds, the works, especially those created from the It was an idea that gained ground with a new generation of artists, born in the 1950s to look at the thing and come back to it again and get engaged with the work. The Hewing closely to the abstract vocabulary inherited from such predecessors as Ber- 1990s on, show how the artists’ worlds expanded in terms of form, technique, and and the 1960s, who came of age as the newly independent Zimbabwe was com- work is about engagement. One-to-one. The viewer must think.” nard Takawira (1946–2006) Muchenje and other younger artists convey the inherent subject, moving beyond local references to mirror the events of their times.