Women’s Day celebrated in art

in style by converging at the Culture Fund of Zimbabwe Trust headquarters for an art forum dubbed “Women and Art.”
The special art Master class aimed to celebrate women in art in the country, their various roles, issues for the contemporary artists and moving forward together to raise the profile and standard of Zimbabwean contemporary art.
Organised by the First Floor Gallery in Harare directed by young fine art practitioner Moffat Takadiwa and his dynamic team, the women in art celebration Master class was facilitated by Russian born Australian Valerie Kabov who is based in France as well as being the senior adviser for the First Floor Gallery.
She narrated at length about women and art, women and art history and the role of gender in art.
This has been the third time she has facilitated similar workshops in the country since 2010.
The full house workshop had the allocated venue over spilling into corridors and outside with artists from all walks of life that constituted more male colleagues in comparison to their targeted female counterparts.
The Master class was graced by some of the current leading female fine art practitioners who gave their unique presentations to the delight of their numerous colleagues.
The artists included art master Berry Bickle, young generation artists Portia Zvavahera and Virginia Chihota who have been a thread of inspiration to many aspiring young and upcoming artists.
The First Floor Gallery supported by the Culture Fund of Zimbabwe Trust and Seven Peaks have been trying to lure young aspiring female artists to take oaths into the profession and register them on their artist data base for future inclusion in the gallery’s various activities.
The gallery has plans to convert their rooms into more exhibiting spaces, artists’ studios for both national and international artists’ in-residence-programmes where they will be able to provide artists with relevant art materials.
They intend to become a vibrant art resource centre and their mission is to assist visual artists in acquiring a variety of skills and techniques in various media.
They want artists to realise their creative abilities without encountering too many technical challenges and limitations, and to be able to cross over to the making of applied (functional) objects.
“First Floor Gallery’s” vision is to become a leading show casing centre of contemporary African-Zimbabwean art and to be a formidable force in the production of high level art and applied crafts.
This will include prototype inventions to be patented, ready for industrial mass-production and marketing, and to be a major catalyst for connecting people and ideas through art.
To date “First Floor Gallery” has hosted numerous art exhibitions with surprising huge attendances graced with handsome art sales, which other established galleries have not been fortunate to have for a
while.
The location of the gallery in George Silundika Avenue is highly strategic, targeting the shear volumes of human traffic in the building.
It exposes art to numerous people including those who are totally ignorant about the subject.
This assist in eliminating the notion that native African people do not appreciate contemporary fine art specially the women who constitute an insignificant number of the country’s artistic population.