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Voti Thebe were espousing for the development of a contemporary African post-colonial aesthetic which countered euro-centric notions and perceptions of Africa.
However, when cultural values are not congruent with the educational infrastructure of the society, a number of problems arise. Firstly, indigenous intellectual artists become increasing isolated from their own audiences.
As a result, the local audiences and market is unable to support their artistic output. Further, local tertiary art education is below par and as such is unable to fully enlighten scholars and citizens unless it is recorded and discussed in an accessible public forum.
Such is the case in Zimbabwe, where the aforementioned progressive, post-colonial artists in the late 1980s, produced enlightening art works in reaction to the cultural confusion wrought about by colonisation.
To this day, their works remain relatively unrecognised and unrecorded in local books on visual art, which were predominantly written by expatriates as a pastime between diplomatic duties, albeit with little, or no, knowledge of our cultural roots, and its development and hybrid evolution.
Consequently, a loss of history and memory takes place, with the effect that the colonised indigenous is kept out of the objective conditions of contemporary nationality. Under these conditions identity easily becomes confused with an “artificial nostalgic folklore” unconnected to the times.
In 1987, in a commentary that predicted our current state of artistic atrophy, especially among our stone sculptors, visual artists, cinematographer and graphic designer Chaz Maviyane forewarned:
“Nostalgic return to our past forms would be tantamount to avoiding situation which demands action against what is dominant and dominating us today.
“Must stay in the contemporary battlefield and fight for our liberation with all the means at our disposal. Cultural imperialism employs the most sophisticated technology, but its methodology also incorporates our own art forms.
“It is up to us, and us alone, to make use of all knowledge in our contemporary devilment. Only then can we revitalise our means of cultural expression, injected with new content. Only then will the process begin of regaining power over the language of words and images . . . We should offer dialogue, not spectacle.”
Similarly, international and installation artist Tapfuma Gutsa prophetically espoused:
“What is at stake here is not simply the power to reclaim cultural traditions which have been repressed and denigrated by the colonisers and which are now being reconstituted by the West as the spectacular other, but rather, the power to transform the opposition between the traditional and modern, and to remake visual language in the image of contemporary Zimbabwe.”
He made reference to the non-commodity nature of traditional forms of Zimbabwean cultural expression.
Given the latter arguments, it would be interesting to note if our young local artists would be able to step out of their “mythical nostalgic cocoons” and spin their web in the new cyber dominated world, without losing their identity.
Stone, paint, ink, lead, cloth, wood, and photography are still very potent media to communicate visual imagery, but it is the concepts that need to be developed and the audiences that need to be enlightened and educated.
As artists, we ought to take a conscious step forward to find and assert ourselves culturally in the New World. However, the process needs to begin on our ancestral land. The onus is on us as scholars to produce an equivalent inventory of new African cultural forms and expressions, with substantive political and philosophical issues involved in the process of artistic representation.
l Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD in Post-Modern Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA Doctorate in Business Administration in Post-Colonial Art and Heritage Studies. He is also a practising artist, visual designer and art critic.
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