adminacclaimed Gwanza Art’s Month of Photography 2011 edition.
Dubbed “Pimp My Combi”, the photography expo for the first time introduced an interactive piece presented by Chido Johnson and a video piece by Breeze Yoko, a South African video artist who was invited together with his fellow countrywoman, Mbali Khosa, as participants to grace the ‘Conversations’ with presentations of their work while the exhibition was still running.
Indeed the two had a remarkable showing that left the sizeable artistic audience stunned, besides the indecent language by the South African brother, Breeze. At the end of the day Yoko and Khosa hailed the organising and reception of international class by the Zimbabwean platform.
After all it was the duo’s maiden participation in major photography expo. Gwanza hosts the biggest annual photography exhibition in Zimbabwe and provides a platform for interaction between local and international photographers.
The earlier feature of the highly informative visual art talk had London-based curator Christine Eyene taking audiences and some participants on a walk-about, enlightening them on how she came up with the arrangement of the artworks in a show in which she was the curator-in-chief, with assistance coming from Raphael Chikukwa, the assistant director and curator of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe and the Gwanza Art team.
The exhibition explored the “Combi” (or minibus) as a local visual and cultural symbol, as well as a means of transport defining both urban landscape and social space throughout the African continent.
Eyene said the show was based on works selected from an open call to local photographers and visual artists, and she created a three-part exhibition spread out over the Courtauld, South and East galleries of the main Gallery. The Courtauld Gallery opened up with an abstract of ‘Yadhakwa Nyika’, a poem by Zimbabwean author Ignatius Mabasa evoking the Combi as a common feature in our daily lives. Written in 2007,
the poem, published in musical form and played in the Combi placed within the exhibition space, resonating with news of tragic road accidents that claimed the lives of many just before and during the show.
The exhibition continued with documentary photography showing a panorama of taxi ranks, followed by pictures of “mahwindi” (taxi marshals or touts) piping out driving Combis.
Extending on the bus, Believe Nyakudjara’s work documented the journey of Zimbabweans to and from South Africa. In this series the bus not only became a people’s carrier but also a vehicle playing an essential role in the business taking place across the Zimbabwean and South African border.
Nyadzombe Nyampenza’s images of an abandoned combi and a young woman underline the extended usage of the Combi, which is common throughout Africa. The four images announced the upper part of the exhibition, which focused on the Combi’s body parts and highlighted a female figure as well and the social interactions that may occur in and around the Combi.
The South Gallery presented a series of colour photographs that depicted dismantled or damaged Combis alongside newspaper posters. Juxtaposed to them, Nancy Mteki’s “Emergency Exit”, stood as a reminder of the safety messages forming part of commuters” experience of public transports.
Continued on the vehicle as a photography subject, Berry Bickle’s images showed a hazy sight caught through windscreens of taxis in Bamako (Mali) and Lubumbashi, (Democratic Republic of Congo).
Her images brought aesthetic elements to the exhibition with a visual play on colours and lines.
South African photographer Mbali Khoza lifted dismantled parts of a bus from mechanical objects to photography subjects, using still life as a genre.
While her fellow citizen, video artist Breeze Yoko, played with moving images on a rhythmic editing and hip hop soundtrack that took the visitors on a journey through the streets of Johannesburg.
The third part of the exhibition pushed the visual experiments and fictional narratives further. Nancy Mteki’s images formed a single body of work.
Her photographs of a young woman taken in a bus were visual compositions that explored the notion of variations on one theme.
The reflections of the inside of the bus in the fancy shades, the props she used and the invented scenes brought a femininity that softened the roughness of the rusty bus.
Pimp my Combi concluded with British photographer, Christopher Hunt, who played on the slang “pimp” to create a story between a man and a woman. By doing so, Hunt succeeded in shifting our association of the Combi from the realm of public transport to that of intimate space. Gwanza 2011 also included an interactive piece presented by Chido Johnson.
“Wawad” (Wire-car Auto Workers Association of Detroit) was a collaborative mobile installation composed of a metal wire Combi, fitted with a sound system and an explanatory booklet.
The ‘Harare Conversations’ revealed that for the first time, Gwanza will be followed up by a more comprehensive exhibition at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in January 2012, featuring visual artists and photographers from across the African continent.
- 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. [email protected]
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