Deconstructing Walls In Hard Times

Zimbabwe Fri 19-02-2010

Deconstructing Walls In Hard Times
By Stephen Garan'anga

The Global Economic Downturn has had a damning impact on the sale of Contemporary Art. Zimababwean Art, long faced with bad economic times, found it even harder to go through 2009. Yet art will always be produced and during the course of the year, hard-pressed artists still found the generosity to give art in support of a Gallery faced with possible closure.

The global economic downturn of 2009 is one that artists and art dealers in Zimbabwe would like to forget. Artists working with little produced major works, but the returns were meager, and now well into 2010 - Africa's most famous year given the World Cup coming later June – the question is whether this year will also create wonders in art.

In the course of 2009, one of the country's longest-serving galleries, the Gallery Delta Foundation for Art and the Humanities, formerly Gallery Delta, held a benefit show on June 19 titled 34 Years Plus: The Gallery Delta Benefit Exhibition' for which it called on artists to donate artworks for the show, which they sold in an effort to remain open.

After more than 34 successful years, the gallery was struggling. Fortunately artists loyal to the gallery overwhelmingly responded. In addition, the gallery relied on diplomatic missions' sponsorship of art shows for support.

^{Assylum seekers behind the wall | Matheus Nyaungwa}

The same financial stress hurt other galleries as well – specifically the country's three branches of the National Art Gallery in Harare, Bulawayo and Mutare. Caught in the downturn were the artists forced to scrounge around for means to support themselves, even to afford materials.

The downturn forced many artists to reconsider what art is - art as invention, finding a spiritual bearing – rather than art as simply social observation. They brought together established media in more daring ways, and strove for effect. The downturn resulted in the evolution of art.

Art on a scale and scope of imagination seldom seen in Zimbabwe came up - works deserving to be seen on their own terms rather than as part of a solo or group exhibition, works which "take to the floor" while people stand around and applaud.

Amongst the many astonishing artworks of 2009 was Richard Mudariki's Struggle Behind Walls. This deceptively “mediocre” painting portrays six, mysterious, disabled human beings like scattered mummies all over a square-tiled floor. An outrageously over-sized multi-coloured, cubistic cock, stands firmly, head facing backward in the middle of the canvas, overlooking some nightmarish, crippled nude figures.

Behind the giant cock, to the extreme left going off the canvas, an unusual animal with a unicorn-like head also faces backwards in the same direction as the giant cock.

Struggle behind walls by R. Mudariki

^{Struggle behind walls | R. Mudariki}

Partially obstructed and directly ahead of the animal and cross-legged, sits a startled half-naked female mummy dressed in a zinc-white robe. On her/its lap awkwardly lies a naked, headless and handless baby figure, whilst to its immediate right lies a motionless single-legged robe-less male figure holding a blunt knife underneath and in-between the spread over legs of the giant cock.

To the extreme right of the cock lies yet another struggling, undressed, white, long-horned, bald-headed male, face turned in the same direction as the cock with both its hands cut through the limbs and heavily bandaged. The man's upper body leans heavily on tiny, white-padded, black metallic clutches, bearing evidence that it has never risen beyond the height.

Further back, in an ivory-black background, emerges a spectacled, well-shaven head with a single left hand holding a flash light above it. From the same background on the middle, extreme right edge, a ballet-dancing figure has its hands raised. Behind the entire weird scenario is a pitch black and dull purple zigzag wall with a single block of very bright ultramarine blue colour.

The Democratic Deconstruction of a Wall is Greg Shaw's graphic work that stood out for sheer provocation. He tidily painted a brick wall on a white background, drawing expressive, timid lines about them, with the inscription on the upper-most side with the words "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person".

Said Greg Shaw: "This work celebrates the 20th anniversary of the demise of the Berlin Wall, an act now seen as a triumph of humanity. This work is not the wall, nor a depiction of it, but its removal in this regard it is not the aesthetic value that is paramount, nor is there any material value inherent in the work other than the materials of which it is constructed. Rather it is a process in which the meaning resides, momentary and transient.

The fragments remain, and are invested with new meaning as the context in which they exist transforms. No longer part of an object that divides and contains, but symbols of the unified process. The work is the removal of an obstacle, literally and symbolically a democratic act".

Lets get Free by J. Zuze He went on to wrap about 120 more bricks that he wrote various messages on for an installation with the same title. He blocked a doorway and invited the audience to deconstruct the wall by removing a brick each that they would take with them. What a noble thought and splendid performance it was!

Included on the outstanding list is Gareth Nyandoro who had a series of iconic masks in which a very unusual one entitled "Mazihobi Aro – Tribute to Sigmund Freud" had some things extra: it was constructed of remains of a corrugated, ancient, deformed and round black pot’s lid that seemed to be telling tales of the infernos it has been through.

Split into halves, it is wired and roughly wound to a filthy multi-coloured and aged plastic paint brush handle used as the nose. The wide open, round eyes of different sizes retrieved from indistinguishable gargets gave the piece a scary look with other parts of the mask made from all sorts of collected items.

Without going through the entire list it will be unjust not to mention Private Room by Munyaradzi Mazarire. Executed out of a solid wood block painted white, it is cut in parallel linear perspective from either bottom corners toward the middle creating a negative space that became the floor.

From the far right back corner of the room in the middle of the block, a closed door has been carved and on the same wall to the left, a chair crafted realistically is done as outlines carved on the wall down to the seat where it is suspended into the negative space as a real physical fiber glass structure. A long table leaning against the extreme left wall into the negative space right in front of the chair is constructed as a physical, half-solid linear structure and the other.

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