The Sunday News
Tafadzwa Gwetai
Ancient art forms and ancient cultures throughout Africa and internationally have always had creations that primary types of art used in Ancient Africa. These were sculptures.
Sculptures were one of the most important types of art in Ancient Africa. Sculptures were mostly of people and sometimes animals. African artists often used wood for their sculptures, but they also used bronze, stone, terracotta, and ivory.
In Africa, art was seldom used for decorative purposes, but rather to give life to the values, emotions and daily customs of the various ethnic groups throughout the continent. African art and culture, in many instances deals with making sense out of the world. It also deals with the religious aspects of life.
African masks often represent a spirit and it is strongly believed that the spirit of the ancestors possesses the wearer.
Ritual ceremonies generally depict deities, spirits of ancestors, mythological beings, good and or evil, the dead, animal spirits, and other beings believed to have power over humanity.
African masks should be seen as part of a ceremonial costume. They are used in religious and social events to represent the spirits of ancestors or to control the good and evil forces in the community.
Any work of art, to be appreciated, has to be understood in context of its cultural origin and culturally cherished values.
You cannot view a piece of art in isolation of its origin. In fact, it would be appropriate to say that sometimes the culture speaks through art, and art helps us in understanding a particular culture better, in whatever form it may be.
Ancient traditional African art, considered for a long time by the western world as primitive and unevolved, is now being hailed as aesthetic and meaningful. Part of the change in perception is due to the efforts of contemporary African artists and the diaspora, who have tried to blend the traditional with modern, using new creative mediums to express the ideas behind these antique works.
Our context being Zimbabwe, our artists are the window through which the world has a glimpse of what Zimbabwe feels. As much as visiting a history museum can provide an understanding of a country’s emergence and political shifts, artists have also been informally documenting the changes about the human condition.
Like our ancient artefacts that were created with cultural purpose, the question is whether their modern creations give off the same energy.
Our ancient creations are mostly all over Europe behind glass in store rooms and private galleries.
These same ancient creations gave a hint of geographic location, the nature of the people that created the art, the purpose for the art in relation to the origin of the artist and the strategic use of symbols for specific ceremony or community.
Our modern artists are faced with the challenge of achieving the same level of purpose through their creations. As a result of consumerism, foreign cultural influences and foreign funded artistic influencers like international art galleries. It is hard for the artists in this time to tell their own true story.
Our Zimbabwean artists have been finding their voice from pre-colonial times to the current times. Artists such as Tapfuma Gutsa, one of Zimbabwe’s prominent sculptors and art influencers gave an intellectual argument in revolt against being branded.
They were branded as “Shona sculptors” as this was a colonial and as well a limiting status.
In the early 1980s he was Founder and Organiser of the Utonga Art Group, Tafara, Harare, Surprise art Centre, Shurugwi, Zimbabwe and Pachipamwe workshops. He has also immersed himself with the Tonga culture with emphasis on basketry which resulted in a solo exhibition titled “Mulonga”.
This also gave rise to the Basket Case workshop and exhibition in partnership with National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Harare. The workshops and exhibitions that Tapfuma Gutsa has been engaged with, tell a story of a desire to have pride in our cultural heritage and the revival of ethnic symbols that relate to the immediate society. Tapfuma Gutsa’s agenda to explore the mythical aspects of African cultures gave rise to a strong pursuit of meaning among many artists in Zimbabwe.
Earlier, the Westerners undervalued African art.
However, once they comprehended that this was not just a random art-form to adorn walls but had deeper meaning embedded within it, their perspective towards it changed. Artists like Picasso, Matisse, etcetera were greatly influenced and inspired by the geometric and abstract qualities of this simple yet complex art form.
African art depicts the relationships between people and the unseen forces. It strives to attain a greater understanding and knowledge of the world by combining the seen with the unseen.
The intangible heritage that is preserved mostly through spoken word in Africa carries the essence of the work created.
This in modern day art language would be the “concept of the created piece”.
The “why”, “reason” and “purpose” of the created art form is crucial to the full understanding and appreciation of art from Africa. Our contemporary artists have been left such an expressive artistic legacy by those gone before us in ancient times. A legacy that the artist has to fulfil in order to firmly preserve what little we have left of our “African self”. [email protected]/ mailto:[email protected]
