Art, artists continue to struggle

like to allude to very briefly and promptly erase from their memories in totality.
The year of the global recession saw artists and their business partners having to content with none or unsatisfactory transactions whilst in possession of valuable investments that the creative minds strived to produce with inadequate resources.
Now firmly into 2011, we are still singing the same old song though some significant positives have taken place.
During the course of the infamous year, one of the country’s long serving galleries now called Gallery Delta Foundation for Art and the Humanities, formerly “Gallery Delta”, strategically rebranded that it could access various aid.
The gallery had been experiencing acute viability challenges for a while that it had to call to artists for donations of artworks to sell for its continual existence.
They had to call for a benefit show on June 19 2009 dubbed “34 Years Plus: The Gallery Delta Benefit Exhibition”. With more than 34 years of flourishing existence at the time, promoting artists and leading in sells of artworks, the gallery was now struggling to survive entirely from commissions taken from the sales of artworks.
Fortunately, artists loyal to the gallery overwhelmingly heeded to the call and saved the day.
Afterwards on several occasions the gallery relied on diplomatic missions’ sponsored art shows and competitions.
The same financial shear stress severely hurt other galleries including the country’s three National Art Galleries in Harare, Bulawayo and Mutare.
Caught in the smoke of it all were artists who scrounged around to find what they could use to produce their work, often not being able to afford or find what they wanted, seeking alternatives, often more effective than what they wanted in the first place.
The year saw individual arts of scale and scope of imagination seldom seen in Zimbabwe before, works which deserve to be seen on their own, rather than part of a solo or group exhibition, works which “take to the floor” while people stand around and applaud.
Gareth Nyandoro created a series of iconic masks which included one entitled “Mazihobi Aro – Tribute to Sigmund Freud”.
It was constructed from remains of a corrugated ancient, deformed round lamp black pot lid that seemed to be telling tales of the infernos it has seen through.
Split into halves, wired and nailed by rotten remains to an irregular shaped piece of discarded timber, rigged and roughly wound to a filthy multi-coloured aged plastic paintbrush handle used as the nose.
The stuck wide open round eyes of different sizes retrieved from indistinguishable gadgets gave the piece a scary look with other parts of the mask made from all sorts of uneasy to look at matter.
Currently in the middle of 2011, the trying times of the first decade of this millennium are still glued on us although people have evolved.
Recently Gallery Delta Foundation for Art and the Humanities echoed familiar distress calls whilst across streets Richard Rennie Gallery had to shut down, selling its property.
Other important art galleries like the National Galleries of Zimbabwe are soldiering on under funding from donations.
The big question now is: Are the practitioners of the creative industries going to survive on their creative skills or they will have to rely on the selling of vegetables and fruits?
l Stephen Garan’anga is an international fine art practitioner, independent art projects coordinator, chairperson of AfricanColours Artists, executive member Batapata International Artists’ Workshop, critical visual arts writer amongst other things. He can be contacted on [email protected]