adminNtombiyolwandle Ndlovu, Sunday Leisure Reporter
VISUAL artists in Bulawayo have expressed concern over their exclusion at this year’s Intwasa Arts Festival koBulawayo saying this has greatly affected their work.
The artists have been part of Intwasa festival for the past three years and had their exhibitions at the National Art Gallery in Bulawayo but were excluded this year because of lack of funds.
Award-winning visual artist, Israel Israel told Sunday Leisure that their exclusion at this year’s Intwasa had affected them in a big way as they felt belittled.
“Being excluded from participating at Intwasa this year has affected us. We had been preparing for the exhibitions and had even submitted our work but unfortunately we were left out. Many artists were expecting to exhibit but we did not. Our exclusion even affected our audience especially those from outside the country, they were expecting to see something from us,” said Israel.
Israel said artists have come together for a collaborative exhibition that would be at the National Art Gallery in Bulawayo.
“We have come together as artists in an exhibition that will be at the gallery on 29 October. The exhibition is named Kusile, It’s a new dawn,” said Israel.
He also said that Intwasa does not value the importance of visual arts.
“Intwasa values performing arts more because they are the ones that dominate the festival. Most of our consumers are white and local people do not understand and appreciate visual arts as an art genre. They tend to favour the performing arts more.
If Intwasa was to keep visual arts in the festival, people who attend the festival were going to learn and understand more on visual arts. There is a need for local people to be educated about visual arts and Intwasa could be that avenue to make people appreciate our art,” said Israel.
Intwasa festival director, Raisedon Baya told Sunday Leisure that visual arts have been excluded due to lack of funding.
“For the past three years we have been involving visual artists but we excluded them this year due to lack of funds. The resources that we were using were not corresponding with what was coming out so we decided to downsize the number of participants this year,” said Baya.
“One of our biggest challenge for visual arts is that we do not have the money to pay them after exhibiting. We will consider them again in future if we get more funding.”
The Bulawayo Art Gallery curator Clifford Zulu said that visual artists had looked forward to participating at this year’s Intwasa but it was unfortunate that they were left out.
“This year’s exclusion from Intwasa affected the visual artists as they had prepared well for the festival. However, the gallery has organised some exhibitions to accommodate these artists,” said Zulu.
Zulu said at the moment they have two shows running at the gallery.
“Right now we are having two exhibitions running; the one called Open Studio Series and the other one is titled Buy Me A Wig,” said Zulu.
He added that the Buy Me A Wig exhibition would tour the National Art Gallery in Harare early next year.
Zulu said the programmes were meant to educate the audience and also provide a platform for local artists to exhibit their work.
“This is an international audience engagement exhibition with supportive education progammes addressing the issues that are both popular and socially poignant in contemporary Zimbabwean and African culture,” Zulu said.
He also said that the gallery would run solo exhibitions every month in a bid to support visual artists.
“The gallery will run two solo exhibitions every month for local artists as a way supporting them. This time we are also trying to give new people in the industry a chance to showcase their work and also get the recognition that established visual artists are getting,” said Zulu
Zulu urged people to support visual artists and to look out for coming events that were lined up at the gallery.
“The gallery has lined up a lot of activities to showcase to the audience and now the audience must come and witness the beautiful work and support the artists. There are interesting events planned that will take place at the gallery every week until the end of this year,” Zulu said.
derick.khumalo