eBusiness Weekly
Arts Correspondent
Admire Kamudzengerere is a Mature Artist who has practiced for over a decade. He recently was invited to participate at the Miart Fair in Milan, a fair which has adopted an approach wherein they set out to establish links between the past and the present.
The Miart Fair featured 174 Galleries from across the world, with the Tyburn Gallery of London representing Kamudzengerere.
Wherein art was bounteously supplied at each booth, and prices hovering variedly about the exposition complex; Kamudzengere clenched the aptly named “On Demand Prize”, a €10 000 bequeathal from a Swiss Production Company called Snaporazverein, to an artist to materialise an exhibition project anywhere in the world!
The “On Demand Prize” hands a carte blanche to the artist to generate a project in a museum or gallery of their choice, the duration of the awards’ extension is a year.
As the only Zimbabwean artist present, Kamudzengerere was awarded one of seven prizes that were up for grabs at this event.
Kamudzengerere had participated at the Zimbabwe Pavilion at the 57th International Biennale of Art in Venice; this led to more opportunities for the artist as he was invited to the Bamako Art Biennale, wherein foreign curators had taken interest in his performance, Transcultural Protocol with Israeli partner, Rachel Monosov.
The artwork had been developed through a proposal he had drafted in Berlin, wherein the project in Mali led to selection for the Miart Fair in Milan.
The work created was meant to be a hybrid of a performance and an installation with numerous facets including a totem pole sculpture and four metre scrolls called drapes. Due to space and logistic constraints, Kamudzengerere eventually forwarded the drapes only.
The drapes were influenced by the cultural and religious environment in Zimbabwe; which he annotated to a dichotomous presentation between “curses” and “good wishes”.
The works are directly inspired by patchwork quilts; the home economical factor being a direct reference for the artist as he underpinned his mother’s streamlined creation of such quilts from offcuts of material due to the lack of financing for inputs.
These scraps would provide her with enough material to sew bedcovers and duvets which she would sell in Uzumba-Maramba-Pfungwe or any such place she learned there was demand for her product.
All the left over scraps of fabric that his mother collected to create unity became references to the drapes; collective stories connected to the Zimbabwean experience patched together to project the various positive dreams and wishes Zimbabweans have.
Part of the drapes patchwork is hewn out of the decommissioned Bearer Cheque currency; something Kamudzengerere describes as a disruptive force to Zimbabwean spending and saving habits within the fact that at that moment in the country’s economic history; the public became used to the idea of being “millionaires, billionaires and trillionaires”, the curse aspect of the drapes comes wherein thereafter, Zimbabwean have been conditioned to an end which they became so accustomed to the former disposition, they cannot save a five cent coin, that is the erasure of the ability to save money or invest for the future.
Kamudzengerere is skeptic however, about the exhibition of his art in Zimbabwe as he feels there are no programmes to enrich the Public on art understanding and knowledge; with his Community Engagement vehicles, the artist painted the walls of his studio black thereafter inviting local Chitungwiza youths to visually express themselves on the blank slate he provided.
The children responded well to the artist’s call with feedback from the elder generation being closed minded and critical, taking the young peoples’ act of creativity as vandalism.
This process was contributory to his Drapes as the youth drew their yearning on the studio walls, a direct motivational connection to the “good wishes” part of his work.
The visitors to the Tyburn Gallery booth at Miart had positive reactions to Kamudzengerere’s work, the installation aspect of it made it appear under a “not for sale” basis, which inadvertently sparked a comfortable fascination in the artwork.
A large segment of the collectors, curators and buyers at Miart Fair expressed knowledge of the artist’s work at the Zimbabwe Pavilion, moreover that, the National Gallery of Zimbabwe’s endeavourers at the Venice Biennale have been greatly noticed and have been catapulting the careers and practices of young and mature artists on the global art scene; something which Kamudzengerere himself observed and linked to his forays at past and upcoming Fairs and expositions!
On the luxuriousness of Art; Kamudzengerere mused upon his experiences in Milan in one way, he pointed out the Italian market’s engrained appreciation for Art.
He connects all the innovations to qualitative perception and points out that in Art, Architecture and Science, Italy has been fervent in the development of best practice, hence the public there understands that they should collect or support all industry.
The artist went on to state that he longed to see the day when Zimbabwe would have Culture Cities or, would evolve into a Culture Country that encouraged tourism that solely consumed the art and architecture of the country. The latter being a void in Zimbabwe’s economy; the consumption of local Art, Design and Cultural persuasion of its consumption.
Of note, Kamudzengerere pointed out that the fact that the Art and Design Fairs in Milan were pulling factors for people across the world, unfortunately Zimbabwe is nowhere in this conversation on a public level.
The exclusion of art in symposia and public policy development forums are in the artist’s view, sad as the built environment and utility objects which people use are derived from artist’s impressions.
The direction in which Zimbabwe is to go is influenced by art and Zimbabweans largely place art on the sidelines.
Miart offered the artist a platform to project past, present and future through creative expression and commentary, interpolating angelus novus by shifting away from the dark histories associated with the country and focusing on potential futures the nation may enjoy.
Kamudzengerere will be appearing at the Dakar Biennale, which opens on the 3rd of May 2018; featuring his work 1972, co executed by Rachel Monosov through a series of performative photographic works taken all over Zimbabwe. 1972 is a quasi-fictional narrative of an interracial couple living in Rhodesia in the titular year, the fact therein being the artists play themselves in a different era.
On the merchandising end of the series that makes up 1972, Kamudzengerere and Monosov have partnered with file transfer site, WeTransfer, for the promotion and online exposition of the series of works.
The duo will perform the Zimbabwe Pavilion staged Transcultural Protocol midyear in Haiti. Kamudzengerere works between Chitungwiza at his Animal Farm Studio and Berlin.
Animal Farm Studio currently has two artists apprenticing under Kamudzengerere, namely Tinotenda Chivinge and Tawanda Reza, who are partaking in a two year residency.
