Zim’s social history on display

peri-urban lifestyles of Zimbabwe’s two main cities of Harare and Bulawayo — which shape the current narrative of Zimbabwe’s social history.
Everyday suburbia is our most familiar environment which finds many interpreters in the arts.  However, these concepts are not exclusive to Zimbabwe.
The exhibition contrasts the works of British artist William Hogarth (1697-1764), an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering Western sequential art.
His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called “modern moral subjects”. Knowledge of his work is so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as “Hogarthian”.  He developed a new genre of “moral narrative” for which he became famous. His artworks comprised picture stories which exposed the follies and vices of his age in realistic, albeit theatrical terms.
Well-known works of art include “The Rakes Progress” (1733-1735), “Laughing Audience (1736), “Beer Street” (1751), and “Gin Lane” (1751), which were pictorial warnings of the unpleasant consequences of alcoholism.
Hogarth engraved “Beer Street” to show a happy city drinking the “good” beverage of English beer, versus Gin Lane which showed the effects of drinking gin which, as harder liquor, caused more problems for society. People are shown as healthy, happy and prosperous in Beer Street, while in Gin Lane they are scrawny, lazy and careless.
The woman at the front of Gin Lane who lets her baby fall to its death, echoes the tale of Judith Dufour who strangled her baby so she could sell its clothes for gin money. The prints were published in support of what would become the English “Gin Act 1751”. “The Preacher” (1736), “Enraged Musicians” (1734), and other etchings he created between 1697 and 1764, were even more lucid satires of the times.
These old master works are contrasted to the current works of Zimbabwean artist Lovemore Kambudzi (1978), whose strident Fauvist colours in pinks, vermilions and turquoises give a social critique and caricature of people in the high-density suburbs of Zimbabwe.
Kambudzi’s work is an affirmation of the expressive potency of pure colour. Here, the artist re-contextualises the social criticism and allegorical subject matter of Spanish artist Goya and British artist Hogarth.
Kambudzi’s work is extremely mannered with an unusual gift for clashing colour chords and ornamental forms that are at once humourous as they are a sad reflection of our times.
Likewise, Wycliff Mundopa’s colourful panorama of Mbare, its urban identity and extremely mobile lifestyle gives credence to our social-cultural milieu, its follies and vices. In contrast to the colourful works of the Zimbabwean artists are the somber etchings of Francisco José Lucientes de y Goya (1746-1828), a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the Moderns.
Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works were both a commentator on and chronicler of his era. The subversive imaginative element in his art, as well as his bold handling of paint, provided a model for the work of later generations of artists, notably Manet, Picasso and Francis Bacon. In his honour, Spain’s main national film awards are called the Goya Awards.
The prolific Spanish artist turned upon his own imaginative visual resources inspiring sinister visions of “Los Caprichos”, a series of etchings he published in 1799.  These were private expressions of his distaste for social and state corruption and the then fanatical church establishment.
His work has unparalleled drama, pathos and immediacy, and are seen as some of the most poignant artworks of social satire. His macabre visions and nightmarish scenes reflect what Goya was experiencing at the time, especially during the Peninsular War (1807-1814).
Goya learned under Jose Luzan Martinez, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Francisco Bayeu (1734-1795), his brother-in-law. His technique owes to Diego Rodriquez de Silva Velásquez (1599-1660) and Spanish Court Painter Menjes. The current exhibition illustrates the spontaneity in which every space and group of people can become an aesthetic space. It also inscribes art in the day-to-day tasks of urban life by showing art’s capacity to elucidate society’s follies and excesses.
The show reconciles past and future societies through the imaginative transformation and realities in present day Zimbabwe. 
Given the urban population is now reported to form 37 percent of the country’s entire population and has drastically increased by an estimated 4,2 percent during the past five years, the exhibition acts as a visual barometer to this new social phenomenon of urban migration, inter-city trade, and the disintegration of time-honoured socio-cultural identity of the people.
Other notable Zimbabwean artists participating in this exhibition include Ian Murphy, Ellard Alfred whose work “Quella Music Delayed Me” strikes a cynical chord and exposes the sometimes irresponsible urban lifestyle led by plebeians. Similarly, Dansile Ncubea and Batsirayi Muskwes give compelling visual accounts of modern-day African suburbia.
This socially relevant exhibition is at once satirical, educational and informative. It is well worth a visit.

Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD in Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA (Doctorate of Business Administration) in Post-Colonial Heritage Studies. He is a writer, art critic, practising artist and Corporate Image Consultant.