adminALMOST 50 years ago Dambudzo Marechera arrived in Oxford as a student but he was soon expelled for misbehaviour and causing disruption in college life.
In a year-long project two Oxford based academics, Dr Tinashe Mushakavanhu and Dr Niall Munro, have been investigating Marechera’s legacy.
The project culminates in a two-month exhibition, Disruptive Dialogues, opening today at the Old Fire Station Arts Centre, a unique public space where people experiencing homelessness in Oxford help to run the arts centre as volunteers, artists, staff and trustees. Marechera experienced periods of homelessness, which have contributed to his legend.
His work poses uncomfortable questions about the city, institutions, and the spaces we live in, but it also shows how artistic production can act as a form of resistance to oppressive structures of power – and even enact change.
The exhibition includes archival materials, found objects, and responses from crowd-sourced events, as well as work produced by participants in writing workshops.
The main featured artist in the show is young Zimbabwean artist, Wynona Mutisi, who makes a series of new colour illustrations of Marechera inspired by his sense of dress and style.
Mutisi, a graduate of Rhodes University, is mostly known for her cover designs of The Continent, a weekly newspaper designed to be read and shared on Whatsapp.
This is the second time Marechera is a major focus in Oxford, where he was infamously expelled.
In 2009, a major symposium was hosted at Trinity College, Oxford as a celebration of the writer attended by scholars and writers.
The exhibition is another significant acknowledgement of Marechera as an important African writer despite being rejected by the university. – Oxford.
Mathew Masinge
Online Reporter