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Arts Reporter
THE National Gallery of Zimbabwe (NGZ) is taking initial steps in returning to normal.
On Thursday, the NGZ reopens with two exhibitions — After Shock; re-imagining life after Cyclone Idai, and David Palacios’ Point of View — headlining the return to normal.
Point of View was set to open at the NGZ in March this year when the global pandemic, Covid-19, reached the African shores and the NGZ was among the first to err on the side of caution by closing its doors to the public and quarantining the two exhibitions.
That decision effectively put the exhibition by the Cuban-United Kingdom artist on ice. Palacios’ work which will be on exhibition is drawn from a selection of works undertaken at different times in Zimbabwe, Nigeria and the United Kingdom.
His work is presented as an installation, whose pieces complement each other.
The NGZ’s is working at bringing to a close the 2020 disrupted exhibitions.
The NGZ’s response in shutting down was part of measures to prevent the spread of the virus by scaling down on social contact and avoiding creation of environments where large numbers of people would congregate and possibly fuel outbreak of Covid-19.
After Shock reflects on the effects of the March 2019’s tropical cyclone, the worst in living memory to affect Africa and the Southern Hemisphere.
It claimed more than 1 300 lives and affected more than 270 000 people in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi, with scores of others still unaccounted for.
Cyclone Idai left a trail of destruction on schools, agriculture and infrastructure, whose cost governments in the region are still counting.
In Zimbabwe the worst-hit districts were Chimanimani and Chipinge in Manicaland province.
Now the NGZ is opening its doors to the public, arguing that where others see challenges it sees opportunities.
But it is doing so also because of the conviction that if the gallery supports artists by re-opening, it will be for the betterment of artists, since when words fail, art speaks.
The double exhibition marks the first under the leadership of the new director, Raphael Chikukwa, who was appointed at the beginning of September. His appointment follows the resignation of Doreen Sibanda, who left in February this year to pursue other interests.
For the past decade, Chikukwa was the gallery’s chief curator.
The major challenge the new leadership at the NGZ has to contend with is the changed cultural landscape in the wake of the Covid-19 and how it will execute its role as a public institution under the new circumstances.
Key among its roles will be ensuring arts remain high on the Government’s agenda and scaling up cultural diplomacy within SADC, the African continent and the rest of the world.
Cultural diplomacy within the SADC region has seen the hosting of an exhibition on Angola’s first post independence president, Antonio Agostinho Neto, an award-winning writer and poet.
Notable at the continental level was the collaboration with Makerere University Gallery on Kaboo Ka Muwala, an exhibition on migration. Its understanding was that migration is not a recent phenomenon epitomised by waves of Africans risking their lives in order to cross the Mediterranean Sea in a bid to make it to Europe.
The exhibition Kaboo Ka Muwala showex that migration can be traced to European exploration and colonization of the world.
At the global level, cultural diplomacy has been marked by Zimbabwe’s participation at the Venice Biennale — dubbed the Olympics of the arts — since 2011.
Participating at the Venice Biennale is key to scaling up cultural diplomacy.
Online Reporter