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Visual artists are not so lucky.
Sure, one or two are profiled on the news or in the newspaper but they hardly get as much prominence as the musicians.
There are many galleries, especially in Harare that offer space for the visual artists to exhibit their work, but because of funds and space limitations, not everyone gets a chance.
Those that get lucky enough to exhibit are charged heavy commissions by the galleries and subsequently get a lot less than what their work deserves.
The sad part of it all is that visual artists have very little negotiating powers since finding space or being accepted for exhibitions is not that frequent.
Thousands of art students and professionals are therefore resigned to competing for the limited opportunities on offer and hardly ever ask the gallery owners to cede to whatever special requests they may wish to get because simply exhibiting is widely considered a big achievement.
Only the established visual artists, particularly those that have won national awards, such as Dominic Benhura or Masimba Hwati often get opportunities to exhibit what they want, and when they want to.
That leaves the talented yet unknown visual artists with a mountain to climb if they are to sell their artworks and live off them.
Some may have been criticized in the past for opting to specialize in roadside or airport art, where they intentionally make several copies of the same artifact then sell them to tourists and interested locals.
The critics assert that the artists, by making thousands of an identical animal sculptures for example, stifle their creativity and in the process take steps away from art in the traditional sense and move more into the craft-making genre.
But who can blame them if they are to make market-driven products at the expense of ‘real’ art that has great potential yet very few success stories?
The visual art market in Zimbabwe is either very small or well hidden. Either way, visual art may do better with a little help from all stakeholders.
When a musician dies, the event is made out to be like a state funeral with the media and politicians putting it right at the top of their priorities.
But who outside the visual arts community remembers Nicholas Mukomberanwa the great sculptor? Or his contemporary Tapfumanei Gutsa? The two and many other great visual artists are probably better known in other countries that appreciate Zimbabwe stone sculpture than here in their own backyards. Zimbabwean stone sculpture has such a rich heritage and does not deserve to be neglected because so many local artists in many places including Tengenenge in Guruve and several locations in Harare continue to add to the legacy of the pioneers.
It is not surprising to note that the majority of exhibition sponsors are foreign diplomatic missions or international NGOs.
It would be irresponsible to assume that, because foreigners are the ones that sponsor and support local visual art, there is no market for such in Zimbabwe.
There certainly is, but visual artists are not given as much coverage as what can be assumed to be the mainstream Zimbabwe arts industry.
Currently, Roki is occupying acres of space in the print media for sitting about and chatting to strangers from other countries in a house filled with cameras and microphones. Granted, reality television has a big audience and many Zimbabweans follow that.
But I still believe the media has to learn to appreciate the effort and talent that goes into the creation of two and three-dimensional artworks, not just because visual art has a rich history that even colonialism could not break, but also because that form of art is communication like no other.
Visual art puts together a message that is encoded and understood in a way that no other art genre can. It is a visual presentation usually cutting through language barriers. Those sculptors, painters, photographers, illustrators and their other visual art counterparts hardly get a mention in the press.
From its early days when art belonged to the community, when art was part and parcel of the community’s way of life and incorporated into ritual and religious practices, up to today when individual artists are free to start and develop their own style, visual art has remained an integral part of Zimbabwe’s pictorial language.
How then is Stunner’s facebook comment more newsworthy than the backbone of Zimbabwe’s arts industry?
No one knows exactly how big the country’s visual arts market is, primarily because no one really is interested in finding out. What is known however is that Zimbabwe has quite a big number of visual artists. The country’s tertiary institutions continue to release many onto the market that already has a good number of self-taught artists.
Any artist would concede that for him/her to know how big a market there is for whatever they produce he/she needs to be exposed to the target consumers.
Urban groovers now know where they stand after the favourable coverage they got since the start of the new millennium. It is high time visual artists find out just how big their market is. The media owes them that much.
Online Reporter