Visual artists grapple with emotions in exhibition

THE Contours of Resistance exhibition is a culmination to months of work by four artists as part of the Animal Farm Artist Residency run by visual artist Admire Kamudzengerere. The exhibition at Artillery Gallery presents work that was incubated in the dormitory town of Chitungwiza.

The artists, Clive Mukucha, Creative Sajeni, Evans Mutenga and Tinotenda Chivhinge reveal their preoccupations in an exhibition that is both challenging and stimulating.

Mukuchas’ mixed media work is a combination of tapestries with solid sculptural forms. The abstract work is visually engaging through form, lines and colours.

The work is embedded with varying sizes of meaningful detail. The titles such as Manera, Nhetembo Isina Mazwi and Hondo Dzenyika reveal a mind that ponders on weighty matters.

A piece titled Misodzi Yedombo is made from a patchwork of polythene material with repetitive circular patterns embedded with clusters of metal dog tags, with strings of wire and heavy objects on one end.

The piece’s title, loosely translated as tears of a stone, could suggest failure to find catharsis through real tears. Minute details of yellow sutures all over the quilt evoke pain and hidden trauma.

Sajeni has many things to say and employs various media to express them.

He employs diverse media such as interweaving belts, pencil and pigment on paper, pigment and acrylic on paper, and fabric, ink, acrylic on paper.

His titles are captivating: Confused Steps, Confused Spirits, Maonero Anosiyana, Freaking From the Pain and What the World Kills You Over.

The last title is one of his more accessible abstract pieces, a collage made from copies of bank notes from various countries, including the words torture and killed.

The work muses on conflict and social unrest around the world as Sajeni seems to distill the motive behind all conflict as gain and profit as represented by money.

The irony is that everyone needs money, even as the artists’ work carries a price tag. Money is portrayed as providing motive, but is not condemned as the epitome of evil.

The other artist, Mutenga plumbs the depths of his two-dimensional medium of stencil, collage and paint on paper.

Impermanence runs in Mutengas’ oeuvre as he reworks some of his old work and adds new elements.

His Comrades series is a motif that allows him to ponder on humans, animals and mythical beings.

Religion is never absent from Mutengas’ work as represented by one of his pieces titled Charismatic Bishop, an oblique reference to one of orders in the Catholic Church, the artist’s professed religion.

In an unambiguous social commentary, his piece titled Kidznet shows a toddler strapped to a seat with virtual reality goggles on its face.

Multi-coloured twisted balloon dogs reflect on the baby’s smile, which seems happily entertained.

The title is an acronym for Kiddies Network and may suggest a post-apocalyptic world where humanity is predominantly hooked into the metaverse.

Then, Chivhinges’ work is made out of used objects assembled into sculptures that comment on social issues. The concept of national bird is given a re-run by the artwork.

His mixed media installation Zimbabwe Birds reimagines the totemic symbol of the country as a democratised idea injected with pathos.

Made from a wild assortment of found objects and old shoes, the colourful and eclectic birds are an alien species that expresses the hybridisation of society. Although they look weird, the birds draw viewers close through familiarity with its various parts such as cutlery.

A piece titled Beautiful Women, is a grotesque sculpture of a woman made from a spring, a gnarled painting brush, a yellow plastic discb and some rubber folded into plump red lips, among other unrecognisable bits.

The piece is a satirical take on the concept and aesthetics of beauty. It pokes fun on standards of beauty imposed on women by the media.

Speaking to NewsDay Life & Style, curator of the exhibition Laura Fungai Ganda summarised it as visual diaries of four artists projecting feelings, sharing emotions and opinions on different aspects of everyday life.