Going gets tough for sculptors

Stephen Garan’anga Visual Art
Gone are the days when local artists could lay their skilful hands on any art materials they desired, readily available for their creativity. Before the turn of the millennium the local art market could sustain lives and many creative practitioners could claim sustainable careers which many wanted to emulate. Since the country faced economic challenges mainly due to sanctions, the decline in market of visual art and lack of some art materials, local and imported has seen most artists moving from visual arts to other forms of employment.

The hardest hit are sculptors .

Local traditional art forms such as stone and wooden sculpture as well as weldart have suffered incredibly from compromised strength, size, practitioner base and business.

For stone sculpture excavators of carving stone are mostly illegal, lack machinery, tools and manpower to retrieve sizeable pieces for bigger pieces. Transport costs to their areas of concentration which are further from the major cities where the biggest artistic population is constituted have become immensely restrictive. For wood carving the suitable trees are sparsely available but illegal to cut down. Conducting any business in wood or its transportation has become almost impossible as it require legal licenses which are a nightmare to obtain.

Conceptual weld art which basically uses scrap metal here, electricity and electrical equipment has been the hardest hit, threatening its eradication on the art landscape. Scrap metal is no longer readily available as a practitioner has to daily compete with the commodity’s major recycle dealer for prices at the fewer scrap yards. This dictates that for a once in a couple of years art seller practitioner it is economically senseless to continue with the practice. Moreover the equipment used such as welders, angle grinders, cutting and grinding discs, welding rods are imported and expensive, therefore beyond reach for many.

The recent Dzimbanhete Arts Interactions weldart workshop and exhibition came as relief amidst the uncertainties that threaten the few artists in the country who are still practicing in the medium and the general decline in participation of other sculptural forms at mainstream gallery exhibitions. This was evident at the year end of 2015’s edition of the returning annual premier art exhibition at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe where only six sculptural works occupied the vast floors of both the lower and upper decks of the imposing art space. During adjudication of this Zimbabwe Annual Exhibition, it was noted that sculpture had the least number of entries which was quite unusual for the history of the exhibition in a naturally sculptural country.

Of the submitted three dimensional work most of them were of unsatisfactory standards, contrary to the past experiences where sculptural work dominated the art scene and scooping the most rewarded awards.

DAI’s exhibition themed ‘From Scrap Yard to the Gallery 3′ by young and dynamic artist Elard Alfred who primarily uses welded scrap iron and steel as the core of his media showed work created over a few days’ workshop period by some men and women of Somerby farm community in which DAI is located along Harare-Bulawayo Road next to the Snake World. It was quite an experience for the community members to gather and reuse all sorts of scrap metal of age, shape and size which they had relegated to the unwanted, left alone to degenerate under the daily state of the atmosphere. They enjoyed learning to weld and creating artworks as well as recognizing the value of all the unused remains of that once flourished as farm equipment. They now intend to give them a new lease of life off the farm into the Gallery of art, special thanks to the skills and effort by Alfred and Dzimbanhete with its partnerships.

Elard Alfred creates work that is mostly figurative and narrative but also full of humour. Majority of his work is in combination of corroded iron and carved fragments of stone widely used for the heads and feet in immaculate media handling. In one piece he depicted a couple on the dance floor elaborating their choreography. Unfortunately the male seemingly old by his forward curving back bent from an old vehicle’s break shoe with a shimmering heavy bald-head and oversized stone boots.

It appeared as if he was held up by his significant other whilst he gave an undivided look into her eyes. He also hung on by his right hand on her waist with the left disappearing behind. His lanky legs assumed incredible pressure from the burdening rock head and the rest of the torso but he was determined to showcase the kind of his fibre that made him a house hold name during his heydays. The lady is highly energetic in a flaring miniskirt of a Chinese mountain bike’s cog full of colour from a touch of spray paint. She elegantly supported him by swiftly swaying her body to the right with her unorthodox left leg right across the immediate front of his stressed legs. Her shiny head and heavy dancing shoes similar to his did not reveal any negative effects on her body as she went through her routines with much ease. Elard had a number of remarkable works in the show which portrayed the current daily lives of both the young, the middle aged and the senior most citizens.

Dzimbanhete Arts Interactions is an arts and culture resource centre located along Harare-Bulawayo highway next to the Snake World hidden within a rich mountainous Southern African forests of balancing rocks and high boulders. It boasts an Art Gallery with sculptural gardens and a unique under construction all Africa Village with the intention of representation of all Africa nations’ various architectural styles for its intended Festival of Afrikan Arts Culture, an idea whose legacy dates back to the early 60s emanating from foundations deeply rooted in the ideals of the Organisation of African Unity, now the Africa Union.