adminAt the Gallery
After a successful debut run in 2013, the Tavatose-Sisonke Schools and Colleges Visual Arts Exhibition takes place at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe and the theme for this year’s exhibition is “Celebrations with the Mbira”.The exhibition will open on Saturday, September 20 2014 and will showcase artworks from schools and colleges around Zimbabwe.
The theme “Celebrations with the Mbira” was chosen in order to highlight the significance of this uniquely Southern African instrument which is considered by UNESCO to be part of Zimbabwe’s Intangible Cultural Heritage. This edition of Tavatose-Sisonke will be in partnership with the Mbira Centre which has the largest and most diverse collection of mbira to ensure that this exhibition is both informative and entertaining.
Tavatose-Sisonke seeks to incorporate artistic skills in school going students as the provision of such a skill creates a well-rounded educational experience alongside reading, writing and arithmetic.
Directing focus at mbira presents students with a theme they are familiar with as this instrument transcends ethnic, social and religious bounds. “Celebrations with the Mbira will give young artists the opportunity to express themselves through responding to a theme that resonates with them and beyond that, an object that has a powerful Zimbabwean history and judging from the work that will be showing, there is rich interpretation of this nation’s cultural heritage in the younger generation.
One may dwell on the state of the arts in Zimbabwe being polarised to such a point were little or no co-operation takes place.
This approach guarantees entropy. Such a rift between the arts results in the loss of intangible heritage and culture in as much as it fractures economic empowerment for the current and future generations. In line with human capacity building and development, Tavatose-Sisonke seeks to utilise indigenous knowledge systems through the participant’s expressive approaches in as much as the exposure to the visual art sector can provide new knowledge for young artists such as networking in the arts.
Taking art education to the formative points in learning can help create a formalised framework whereby the practitioners of the sub-sector are fully knowledgeable of their environment. Such artists are to be developed right now and exhibitions such as celebrations with the mbira can be used to gage the direction art in Zimbabwe will be taking in the distant future. In the long run, Tavatose-Sisonke seeks to disburse artistic skills to young artists in order to persuade the establishment of co-operative for artists, which would serve as formal and culturally relevant establishments.
“Celebrations with the Mbira” will offer a bridge to knowledge of this indigenous instrument to participants by instilling a sense of identity and craftsmanship, features which are associated in the creation of the mbira, and in all aspects the viewer will see different types of mbira being incorporated into the exhibition due to the wide expanse of places where artworks have been submitted.
The exhibition is aimed at encouraging the development of visual arts and ensuring that all budding artists in schools and colleges are afforded an opportunity for exposure in the arts which has been limited in the past. Building from last year’s inceptive edition, Tavatose-Sisonke strives to integrate as many schools from outside the former group A tier as possible.
In that light the themes have been largely dealt with in a manner that cuts out the former notion that art serves as a skill, pursuit and interest of the upper class as the National Gallery of Zimbabwe’s Education and Public Programmes Department has through their outreach programmes, identified high potential in artistic talent in areas other than cities. In addition, when pursuing programmes such as this it came to light that in rural and grassroots communities there is a higher proficiency in manual activities.
The manual factor presents a variety of insights on Mbira; the participants responded to the theme with materials that were easily available to them. As such students used various mediums ranging from paper and card board to gourds and discarded objects such as lollipop sticks to make their art works. What the viewer is guaranteed is an identifier of the amount of creative talent that Zimbabwe bears in terms of utilizing available resources. As Tavatose-Sisonke deals with a familiar theme which borders on two sub-sectors of the arts (Visual Art and Music) it is of great importance to identify visual art as the largest employer in the creative industries as the means to pursue it can fall below the cost of training as compared to the other arts.
The outreach approach also utilised in Tavatose-Sisonke serves as a nip in the bud for visual art development as it engages basic education institutions, that is, the primary and secondary school system predominantly consisted of students who might not be normally exposed to art.
This sets the exhibition’s participants on a positive path in attaining a well-rounded education.
That being said “Celebrations with the Mbira” serves to offer its participants with a step toward art as a calling and granting them with an opportunity to exhibit on a platform that is accessible to a wide audience with the focus of introducing these young artists with the dynamic of how they can consider art as a profession and what the gallery environment can do for their art.
Online Reporter