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Herald Correspondent
AFTER graduating from St. Lawrence University in the USA, Tandazani Dhlakama moved back home to Zimbabwe in 2011.
Initially, the intention was to become a full-time practising artist. However, she was open to finding a job that would give her income until she could live off of her artwork.
Starting out as a full-time artist can be tough for most people, not only in Zimbabwe, but all over the world. At St. Lawrence, her programme was a double major in Political Science and Fine Art, with an honours in the latter.
Even though she was applying for many non-governmental organisations (NGO) jobs too, she found out early on that it was mostly the Art world doors that would open for her. For example, in the four years that she was studying, the part-time student jobs mainly happened to be in the campus art gallery and Art Faculty offices.
When Dhlakama moved back to Zimbabwe in 2011, within a month she was fortunate enough to be offered a job at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (NGZ), an important space that would eventually have a significant impact on her.
“Getting a foot through the door so quickly, came about because of the amazing Doreen Sibanda, who was the Executive Director at the time,” she recalled this week.
“I had been acquainted with her a few years prior during one of my university holidays that I spent in Harare, when she had given me an opportunity to intern at the National Gallery. From the onset, she really believed in me, challenged and gave me lots of room to learn and grow.
“Very soon, I realised that I thoroughly enjoyed the administrative, collaborative, knowledge-sharing element of working in art spaces. I found that I really loved museums and their mandates. I also liked engaging with local and international artists and delving into their practices.”
At first she started off with the title of the NGZ’s, Marketing and Operations Officer and by the time she left, she had moved up to Curator for Education and Public Programming.
She was with the NGZ from 2011 to 2017, however, in between she took a one-and-half year break to study and intern elsewhere.
Being part of a small team at the NGZ meant that they were all very hands-on and engaged in work that was over and above their titles.
Dhlakama’s advice for anyone starting out in the creative sector, is to be open – do whatever needs to be done and don’t obsess over the title. It is your work that speaks. That’s how one learns. Dhlakama says as cliché as it sounds, team work makes the dream work, and the NGZ had a great team at the time.
“Looking back, it is amazing how the team was able to do such impactful work that resonated both locally and internationally, in fact they still do.
“While I was there, much was learnt from art veterans who had been there for decades, holding up international museum standards around preservation, acquisitions and exhibition mounting methods.
“However, I also gained practical knowledge from newer staff, such as Raphael Chikukwa, who started around the same time (2010). People like him taught me the basics about curatorial practice, museum education, and critical discourse around art from Africa.”
Since last year, Chikukwa assumed the NGZ’s Executive Director’s position, following Doreen Sibanda’s departure early in 2020.
Dhlakama started getting involved in curatorial work while at the NGZ. She realised the need to obtain more theoretical grounding in this area.
She says: “I am grateful to Raphael Chikukwa and Doreen Sibanda who gave me the space to curate a few shows very early on at the museum. This turned out to be something I enjoyed.
“I attended an eye-opening curatorial intensive called New Ideas, New Possibilities in Bulawayo in 2013. The concepts that we explored piqued my interest. By that time, I had also visited a few major art events outside Zimbabwe and wanted to strengthen my curatorial and art history knowledge.”
As fate would have it, in 2014 Dhlakama was awarded a Beit Scholarship to study for an MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies at Leeds University in the United Kingdom.
The MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies at Leeds University gave Dhlakama insights into the histories of exhibitions, collecting, policy making and various theories around education, translation, and interpretation of cultures.
“These were all things that I took back with me to Zimbabwe. They impacted the way I was thinking about day-to-day practice, culture, history, access, privilege, public programming and engagement,” she says.
In 2017 Dhlakama was the conference co-ordinator of the 2nd International Conference on African Cultures hosted by the NGZ. It was a major global meeting of people working in the area of museums and it brought together movers and shakers of the art and heritage industry from all over the world. Over three days delegates deliberated on urgent matters around art and culture. As hosts, the NGZ was proud to work closely with other local galleries, museums, heritage sites and artists, to ensure that local and international visitors saw the best of what Zimbabwe had to offer.
She says: “It almost felt euphoric at the time. It may have seemed as though all odds were against us, but we did it! The NGZ team was stretched and challenged in many ways, and because of that, in that moment we knew anything was possible and we felt reinvigorated. “
That year, 2017, the NGZ celebrated its 60th Anniversary and produced a major publication. Dhlakama says she feels honoured to have been part of all of these milestones.
In December 2017, Dhlakama felt the need to broaden her horizon and joined Zeitz MOCAA, a new museum focused on contemporary art from Africa that had just opened in Cape Town, South Africa.
Between finishing her MA and returning to Zimbabwe, Dhlakama had spent six months on a training programme with Zeitz MOCAA. Three months after they opened, they invited her to join their team on a full-time basis.
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