Victor Nyakauru: An Extraordinary Eye For the Creatures of the Animal Kingdom

Zimbabwe Thu 11-11-2010

Victor Nyakauru: An Extraordinary Eye For the Creatures of the Animal Kingdom
By Stephen Garanan'ga | AfricanColours.com

Negotiating through the 1950s classical double heavy glass doors of the North Gallery at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Harare, you would be admonished to enter at your own risk. Venomous creatures are crawling all over the floors and walls of their entrapment.

Berejena by Victor Nyakauru

A scollepindra, a nocturnal centipede titled 'Mbambarize' with poisonous nippers is out in the day larking behind the sealed entrance, ready to pounce on anything with a heartbeat that unwarily enters the dungeon. Its delicately carved boney head-front emerges from a metal cap attached to a smooth, shiny pitch black streamlined and segmented spring stone body with numerous creepy spiky metal legs raising it from the ground. A mere site of the curved and bent centipede sends your heart pumping blood ten times faster, making a chill run through your body.

A Tsetse fly titled 'Ruma Mombe' of metallic wings and legs, boney head, wooden middle part and a thick black serpentine stone bottom flies round and round with the intent to cause excruciating pain and swelling. This is how Victor Nyakauru a mixed media sculptor wants it, a creator after thee creator exercising his ability and power of creativity to put up a solo sculptural exhibition of dizzy heights.

Like in the torrid Namib desert sands of Namibia, life on the gravel plains is a very serious business where camouflage is an essential assert to survival. A potential prey animal has made itself hard to see against a rock, a chameleon titled 'Rwaaaaaavhi' melting its skin, uniquely among chameleons this species lives almost entirely on the ground. In order to survive in such a dry habitat, its diet consists not only of insects and many beetles, but also scorpions, lizards and even small snakes including venomous ones.

Victor Nyakauru's detailed chameleon is an unmistakable blacksmith's creation carved from a multi coloured leopard rock body joined to a metal head, long tip end coiled tail and lanky tight grabbing legs.

Bottle Fish by Victor Nyakauru

Strangely, a shiny chromat black stony bottle fish with a long boney nose and metal fins hangs on the wall in turmoil of birds of prey, scavengers, both crawling and flying insects as well as other predators in form of a white hyena titled 'Berejena', a dog titled 'Imbwa Nyoro' and a giant 'Marabou Stork'.

A wooden headed dung beetle titled 'Ground Beetle' searches for bull manure in a glimmer coat of black serpentine high above the ground on support of limbed metal legs crawling adjacent to a sluggish snail titled 'Hozhwa' out of its highly polished realistically sculpted heavy black serpentine shell, dragged on by a roughly chipped away body with twin boney antennas.

As the way of a desert, there is a variety of animal life but there is relatively few of each species. There is not much food to share, what there is has to be earned by constant effort. Though big headed in Nyakauru's traditional materials (bones, wood, stone and metal), a geko titled 'Mpurwa' tries to remain invisible on a rock above an imaginary horned adder that larks inconspicuously in the shed below in a battle of camouflaged experts. The adder will eat the geko but it must be able to see it first as its temperature is the same as the rock.

A shiny giant ivory black spring-stone millipede titled 'Tshongololo' moves about carelessly on its hundreds of creepy nail legs, knowing that it has no predators. It consumes the earth's rotting matter slowly for several hours, seeing off several changes in the daily state of the atmosphere. Titled the 'Green Bomber', an uneasy site of a giant common wild green fly and a vector of cholera glides in the room attracted to the pungent smell of human waste. A piece inspired by the horrific cholera epidemic of the year 2008 that thousands of Zimbabweans succumbed to and sent numerous others across boarders into neighboring countries raising hell in the region.

Imbwa Nyoro by Victor Nyakauru

That is the way Victor creates his 'Creatures' or 'Tuzvipuka', a theme that seems to be stuck on a hidden away part of his brains since he turned professional. His themes are rooted in the world of great and small animals that have inspired him with ideas and creations of these creatures. Some of these insects and animals have been used in our Shona folklore. Folk tales have been used to teach life's lessons and entertain. The construction and everything involved in folk tales revealed much about the essential values of a society.

This milestone solo exhibition is a follow up project to 'Insecta / Tumbuyu', his earlier one man show that attracted him a lot of attention after portrayal of various myriad insects (tumbuyu) using similar materials. Victor has an extraordinary eye of observing the Lord's creatures. A couple of years ago he created an outstanding mixed media sculpture of a white hyena titled 'Berejena'. It lazily faced sideways in a boney head with metal ears and manes running over to its high shoulders of opal stone supported by welded rusty legs.

The sculpture got him rewarded with two of the most prestigious national arts awards in the country's calendar of the year 2008, the National Arts Merit Awards. Eventually the piece was purchased for permanent collection by the National Art Gallery of Zimbabwe.

Other live story telling creatures of this wonderful exhibition in mixed media include Tsuro Kanga, Dora, Bete Resango, Marhabhu Stork and Gakanje.

Victor Nyakauru was born in 1977 and embarked on his professional art training at the National Gallery Visual Arts School where he was honored with an extra year of exploration with availability of free resources. Subsequently, he then won two first prizes at the outgoing students' final year exhibition. Since then he never looked back and has been rewarded with numerous awards for his outstanding work.

Tshongolo by Victor Nyakauru

Prior to this 'Creatures / Tuzvipuka' solo project, Victor had just come off a successful residence program with the National Gallery (NGZ) in Harare. The Gallery as a centre for contemporary art seeks to develop the visual arts through nurturing talent and creativity at professional levels.

It offers artists the space to showcase their expressions and at the same time give them a platform to be recognized by national and international audiences. This hallmark will see the National Art Gallery of Zimbabwe play its role of promoting the best artists and preserving their valuable works.

Victor has shown an assured level of expressiveness and technical skill which has contributed to the sustenance of sculpture in Zimbabwe. The three dimensional work use mixed media to explore the unorthodox as it presents itself in the artist's mind. Victor Nyakauru's next intended art project is working with wild animals and we hope his work continues to arouse interest, curiosity and discussion.

Having his works welcomed by the people shows the artist has a bright future.

Posted By: Hirum Ndungu

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