By Andrew Mulenga
Zambia’s art scene has for a long time been in need
of another book to share the shelf with the 2004, Gabriel Ellison title Art in Zambia.
The nation has repeatedly been skimmed over by art
historians and international curators consequently being omitted from important
publications that have often focused on neighbouring countries creating a gap
in literature on art.
From colonial times when the west had just begun to display
what is called ‘tribal art’ in museums, there had always been a preference to
catalogue artefacts from countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and
Angola (Chokwe masks) and Tanzania (Makonde wood carvings) across the border.
When the focus shifted to ‘modern art’ again concentration
was on Mozambique, with artists such as acclaimed painter Malangatana and the
sculptor Chissano, being well documented. Zimbabwe too has many books written on
its now world famous tradition of stone sculpture.
So the new book Zambia:
Implosion for Explosion comes as a pleasant gesture. Written in both
English and Italian it is designed as a catalogue for part of Italian tycoon
Luciano Benetton’s international collection, featuring the works of 162 individuals
listed as Zambian artists.
It has no chapters per se but a collection of five
short commentaries on visual arts and the socio-economic environment of Zambia
among other things, one is attributed to Benetton himself. The other
contributors are emerging Italy-based curator Abdulmalik Mabellini and Zambian
artists William Miko, Clare Mateke and Mathew Mudenda.
But the well bound, 300-plus page, hard cover book
is somewhat problematic when issues such as context are taken into consideration.
Of course the book is part of the Italian clothing and investment mogul’s “Imago Mundi,” Latin phrase for “image
of the world” project where by 2016 he plans to collect the work of 10,000
artists from 60 countries, but it raises questions on the publication’s true
purpose, particularly on how the Zambian art scene is portrayed and essentially
how the publication came into being.
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The book is not yet available in Zambia but can
be ordered online at the cost of €20 (twenty euros) |
In his introduction, Benetton describes the 162
participating artists as “afronauts”, a term coined by the Zambian visionary Mukuka
Nkoloso who hoped to send a girl and two cats to the Moon and later Mars in a
space programme under his independent National Academy of Science, Space
Research and Astronomical Research in 1964. Benetton suggests as afronauts Zambian artists are exploring
a country undergoing massive change. Comparably, although it is not mentioned
in the book, anyone passingly familiar with We’re
still going to Mars a body of work by painter Stary Mwaba that explores Nkoloso’s
concept is also the basis of his ongoing residency at the Künstlerhaus
Bethanien in Berlin.
However, in the text Benetton also illustrates Zambia’s
geographic location and mentions a few things from urbanization to Chinese
investment, after remarks on the “impressive” Victoria Falls he explains how
his collection intends to provide Zambian artists with much needed
international exposure.
But the impression throughout this piece of writing echoes
a tone of discovery, the encounter of a faraway land the world knows very little
or nothing about.
Mabellini picks that tone up like a baton in the subsequent
write-up as he opens suggesting that while the world has been ignoring Zambia,
it’s art has been flourishing under very harsh circumstances such that artists
are forced to use materials such as “garbage”, “old bed sheets”, “car paints
and burlap” (in those exact words) for their art production.
Before he too lands at a description of the Victoria
falls, he makes quick work of giving a historic overview of the art scene in what
appears to be a two paragraph summery of Ellison’s Art In Zambia in proper sequence from her tackling of the art that
was introduced by European settlers through to Tavern art and ending at Stephen
Kapata so beloved by foreign collectors because of the perceived innocence and naivety
of his style.
Nevertheless, concerning the use of discarded
materials, there are only a handful of artists practicing in this genre. The
average Zambian artist uses imported and highly expensive paints, inks and
canvases some from Italy itself. Even so, global trends show that use of the
“found object” has been on the increase in art production particularly in the light
of environmental awareness. Just last year the Financial Times announced the London auction house Bonhams achieved
a record US$850,000 for a tapestry by celebrated Ghanaian sculptor and scholar
El Anatsui Africa’s highest grossing artist made out of trash in the form of
flattened beer cans and bottle tops, Kenyan artist Cyrus Kabiru too is also causing
an international sensation with his re-purposed materials.
What appears to be happening with the book is a kind
of fetishization, a search for the exotic or perchance the primitive.
While Mateke, Miko and Mudenda’s contributions
provide more practical observations in short essays entitled Art in Southern Zambia, Zambian Art Must Implode to Explode and Copperbelt Art respectively, after these
are a few pages of select images, which again seem awkward.
Some show the Bush Art Gallery and the Mosi-O-Tunya
Art Centre two roadside art shacks in Livingstone which sell inexpensive tourist
art – like seed and straw mosaic -- that lacks the conceptual thought or complex
production processes of mainstream contemporary art practiced by a good number of
the 162 artists featured in the book.
Images of the country’s most outstanding and
comprehensive collections such as Andrew Sardanis’ Chaminuka, John Kapotwe’s Namwandwe
or Enzio Rossi’s Villa Lucia that have hundreds of the best paintings and
sculptures between them are omitted as are gallery spaces like the Henry Tayali
Gallery, Twaya Art Gallery and the cutting-edge 37d Gallery which on opening
night can rival any overseas gallery by standards of display. In light of this one
gets the feeling that images of these spaces were omitted in order to cast a
shadow of parochial simplicity on the Zambian art scene?
As earlier noted, the manner in which the book was
put together also raises a few concerns. Early this year, Mabellini was tasked
to engage a minimum of 140 artists through Zambian contacts with whom a call for
participation was made with the promise of a great opportunity for international
exposure.
Through the Zambian contacts, artists were called
together and when he flew in, each one of them was provided with a small, postcard
size canvas of 10 x 12 cm on which they were tasked to create works of art. The
artists never received any brushes, inks, paints or indeed payments beyond the
promise of having their work exposed in an exhibition abroad. But perhaps a
little monetary gain for them would not have hurt considering they were
contributing their work to the collection of a person whom Forbes lists as one
of the richest men in the world with a net worth of US$ 2.6 Billion dollars.
The tiny canvases are a clever gimmick because
obviously all 162 of them must have been able to fit in one bag which may have
even been carried on to the plane to Italy as hand luggage. Meaning someone was
able to fly in and out and collecting 162 samples of art by Zambians at the
cost of an air ticket and of course decent accommodation.
What is probably aggravating is the fact that Zambia
has some of the finest realistic painters anywhere in the world and a few of
them such as veteran Vincent Maonde of Livingstone or the younger Caleb Chisha of
Lusaka are in this book but the works they submitted are perhaps among the
worst of their careers, think of it as a worst works competition. Here, one
also wonders how much time the artists were given to complete these works,
photographs in the book show some Livingstone-based artists working in groups
as if being watched over, one artist from Lusaka however confirmed that he was
given between 10:00hrs and 16:00hrs to conceptualize and execute the work.
Be that as it may the artists in the book, are all
jumbled together regardless of career level, genre or alphabetical order, it is
one thing to have an all-inclusive publication but half the artists in the book
hardly practice or exhibit publicly and many of them are in actual fact
students in both secondary school and higher learning institutions who happened
to be in the right place at the right time when the call for artists was made.
Zambia may be in need of international exposure but
it is not entirely invisible to the global art scene. For years, by individual
efforts, artists have continuously represented their country on the
international circuit. This year alone for instance Lusaka-based Lawrence
Chikwa featured prominently in the blockbuster exhibition “A Divine Comedy” set up by international curator Simon Njami at
the Frankfurt Museum of Modern Art. Closer to home, Lusaka’s Zenzele Chulu and Norway-based Victor Mutelekesha are
featured in !KAURU a roving SADC
exhibition that opened at the University of South Africa (UNISA) which seeks to
address “African identity, modernity and contemporaneity” questioning who has a
right to speak for or represent whom. Needless to mention in 2009 when only
aged 30, Anawana Haloba exhibited at the 53rd Venice Biennale, the
world cup of art. These are just a few.
Zambia’s idiosyncrasy therefore should not be so
much the artist’s choice of material, but the fact that they can use it to produce
both simplistic and conceptually complex works for local or international intake
depending on the situation. Had Mabellini done a little more research or stayed
in the country a little longer than the nine days in which he had to travel
from Livingstone, Lusaka and the Copperbelt he would have grasped a more
realistic understanding of the substantially fragmented but pulsating art scene
that the book masks.
It must be noted also, that this is not the first
time Zambian artists are being featured in a catalogue of an international
private collection. In 2005, the works of Flinto Chandia, David Chirwa, Enoch
Illunga, Stephen Kappata, Fackson Kulya, Style Kunda, Teddy Zebbie M’hango, William
Miko, Adam Mwansa, Godfrey Setti, Shadreck Simukanga, Henry Tayali and Friday
Tembo were featured in Transitions
(Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe 1960 -2004) one of four
exhibition catalogues for the Robert Loder collection that was shown at The
Africa Centre in London. It was a culmination of the Loder funded Triangle Art
Trust Workshops and exhibitions.
Clearly expressing the purpose of that publication,
one of the contributors, John Picton, professor of African Art in the University
of London stated: “The sequence of catalogues accompanying these exhibitions
has achieved two purposes. The first is to place Robert Loder’s collection in
the public domain, and the second is to accompany the illustrations with a
series of texts that permit the thematic development of contexts within which
to understand the material on show”
In Zambia:
Implosion for Explosion however, the
works appear to be dangling with “no explanation of the thematic development of
contexts”, possibly by design all is left to the readers’ imagination.
All in all the book is a hasty interpretation of the
Zambian art scene through jaundiced Western eyes. The question Zambian artists
should really ask themselves is whether the way they have been portrayed in
this book is how they would like to be seen by the rest of the world.
As for the authors, there would have been no harm to
also borrow from the comprehensive texts in the Lechwe Trust Catalogue by Cynthia Zukas, Roy Kausa and Miko that
provide a detailed account of art in Zambia from the 1960s until the present.
Zukas has been a practicing artist for over 50 years and was even knighted for
it, Kausa has been writing on art for over 30 years, citing such a publication
along with Ellison’s work or interviewing these individuals would have surely strengthened
the new book contextually, is it not the whole purpose of a bibliography.
Zambia:
Implosion for Explosion is easy to read but not engaging or
interesting enough to pick from the coffee table for a second read. Was it
enough to satisfy the commission of the collector? Yes. Is it a true portrayal
of the Zambian art scene? No.
Nonetheless, the book borrows
its title from the text Miko provides. It is from a concept he first shared in
a presentation during the 15th Triennial Symposium on African Art by
the Arts Council of the African Studies Association hosted by the University of
California, Los Angeles in 2011 where he likened the Zambian art scene to
something that is undergoing internal combustion, it is a theory linked to "Kundwe" out here! : it is always
darkest just before dawn” a critical analysis of the state of Zambian
contemporary visual art developments he delivered during the International
Association of Art Critics symposium held at the University of Cape Town in
2007. The theory around these two papers are also the driving force behind the
concept “Correcting the national anomaly” in which Miko implies the way to a
better art scene in Zambia is through education. Fuelled by that viewpoint,
alongside fellow artist and scholar Billy Nkunika, they were the key figures
behind the graduation of the first Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree holders to be
produced locally through the Zambia Open University in September this year.
