Young artists urged to reflect their roots

Africa.
This was said by businessman Mr Charles Makombe at the student art and design exhibition for upcoming visual artist Panashe Masoka-Ruzvidzo in Harare recently.
“So often we find that exported contemporary Zimbabwean artists create negative images of cheap politics, bloodshed and poverty rife in the nation. This is mainly through the influence of foreign media to which they are exposed as well as to please the neo-colonial hand that pays them.
“Within Zimbabwe there is an epidemic of airport art which is the mass production of often plagiarised concepts and artworks. Let us appreciate who we are and uplift ourselves and each other, map our own course and define our destination,” he said.
The problem of Western aesthetics in African (Zimbabwean) art is largely attributable to the influence of the state of the education system in Zimbabwe and across the continent that is based on Western artists and scholars such as Socrates, Gamaleo, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, among others.
This calls for an overhaul of the schools curriculum in respect of the art subject.
In an interview, Panashe Masoka-Ruzvidzo, from the Chinhoyi University of Technology, said she would avoid Western influence which had become the bane of most young local artists.
“My art pieces are basically afrocentric and my intended audience is Zimbabwean. I would rather sell my pieces at a lesser price here in Zimbabwe than have my work appreciated by outsiders,” she said.
The exhibition was Masoka-Ruzvidzo’s first as she begins her journey into the public arena. The world over, visual art is used to define the prevailing mood in a society.