Craftsmen double stocks for UNWTO

By Andrew Mulenga

It is still a month away, but the vendors and craftsmen who occupy the 60 stalls at Mukuni Park Curio Market in Livingstone have increased their stocks and sharpened their chisels to create yet more handicrafts to cater for the estimated thousands of delegates and tourists that are expected to throng the city.  



Mukuni Park Curio Market Vice-Chairman John Walubita
working on animal carvings outside his stall in
 Livingstone - Picture By Edwin Mbulo

“We plan to have on display certain crafts that we normally export to Countries such as South Africa like elephants and other crafts made out of iron wood. Iron wood fetches a good price when exported and if sold locally the price is low,” says Mukuni Park curio market vice-chairperson John Walubita.

Meanwhile, Mukuni Park the lush green space just behind the stalls will be a venue for performing arts during the 20^th Session of the UNWTO General Assembly according to the official exhibition programme from the National Arts Council. The park was in 2008 rehabilitated by the World Bank funded Support for Economical Enhancement and Diversification (SEED). It was an important site for the local population of Livingstone which historically served as a recruitment centre for local African labour and activities such as parade of the Native Police and the Barotse Native Police Band which later became the Northern Rhodesia Police Band that played at the park every Thursday evening.

Nevertheless, if you have no fear of the challenge of extra luggage the best news of all is that you can take it all home with you after all, the theme for all the exhibitions is “Take Zambia Home with You”, encouraging all the delegates to visit the exhibition stands and buy “something Zambian” to take home with them.

According to NAC, all seven official UNWTO hotels will have space reserved for one form of exhibition or another and besides Mukuni Curio Market, handicrafts have several existing and new places.

The Livingstone National Museum will be the official venue for a National Arts Exhibition which will showcase paintings and sculptures; and it is also expected to have fifteen exhibits from Zimbabwe.

For fans of heavier, more solid sculptures, National Airports Corporation has availed space set up a sculpture park in a paved area in between the car park and the airport building.

Falls Park Mosi-O-Tunya Road is will also be among the main exhibiting areas and featuring  two  large marquees which will be mounted at Falls way Park area, one on either side of Mosi-O-Tunya Road, they will accommodate 30 exhibitors each (15 on either side).

EXHIBITION VENUES

Victoria Falls Curio Market

The oldest curio centre in Livingstone has been rehabilitated by National Heritage Conservation commission (NHCC) so as to make the environment of doing business at the world heritage site conducive. While the new curio market is under construction the traders have been temporary relocated to trade at the up-stream viewing point of the Victoria Falls where a makeshift shop has been set up.

Livingstone Museum

While the art gallery at the already popular museum has been made available for the display of artworks the Spanish-style, open-air patio will be used for the launch. Here visitors might just get a delightful surprize because according to insiders, some of the well preserved paintings by Europeans from the 1700s that pre-date Livingstone and have been locked away for safe keeping may just find themselves in the main exhibition space.

Protea Hotel (Falls Way Car Park) and Fallsway Lodge

A total of 60 tables will be allocated to exhibitors to showcase and sell high quality handicrafts and other products. This space will also include exhibitors from the Zambia Development Agency and will include; Zambia Gemstone Miners, Traders and Jewellers Marketing Association, Handicrafts Association of Zambia, Chawama Crafts and Curios Association, Lilanda Crafts and Curios Association, Pakati Kwacha Association, Chikumbuso (Recycled plastics), Evie Nix Fashion, Joel Kapungu, Products from the crafts producers that are being trained by UNDP and NACZ as well as other established crafts producers who will receive personalised invitations.

Maramba Cultural Village

Crafts producers from all across Zambia who participated in the provincial auditions will be here, but there will also be more sheltered exhibition spaces (marquees) created to cater for crafts traders from the streets. This is bound to be the “must visit” area for anyone buying trinkets on a budget. Ornamental mortars and pestles, drums and masks from all over the country will be found here at reasonable prices ideal for souvenirs and gifts for friends and loved ones back home.

Falls Way Lodge, Chrismar Hotel and Sun Hotel, will accommodate arts and crafts whereas the Courtyard Hotel will only house fine art only.

Wayiwayi Art Gallery and Studio

The art gallery and studio space set up in Dambwa North Extension off the Airport Road by the accomplished Zambian art couple Agnes Buya Yombwe and Laurence Yombwe upon their return to Zambia after living and teaching in Botswana for over a decade is also slated to be one of the exciting spaces during the UNWTO.

The space will house a contemporary art exhibition by various Zambian visual artists as well as a crafts exhibition. Visitors will get the chance to purchase jewellery designed by Agnes and her teenage daughter Yande that are fashioned from found and reclaimed objects but are crafted to very high standards that have also been exhibited and well received in exhibitions abroad. Wayiwayi will also be offering a crash course in their speciality, art classes for children and adults, so delegates and tourists will have a chance to get their hands dirty.

This studio space also serves as the Yombwe’s home, so visitors here might also be lucky and sample the hospitality of a truly Zambian couple, the Yombwe’s being as friendly and as welcoming as they are a simply a microcosm of the average, urban Zambian family. As an artist couple their work borrows from the Mbusa initiation rites of the Bemba people in Northern Zambia, either individually or as a duo, Laurence and Agnes remain among the influential contemporary Zambian artists of their generation.

Livingstone Art Gallery Site        

This space off Sichango Road in the Livingstone showgrounds will house the Insaka International Artists Workshop and will host an exhibition exclusive to contemporary art. A total of 14 foreign artists from ten different countries will be in attendance from Austria, China, Ethiopia, Finland, Kenya, South Africa, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Tanzania and the co-host Zimbabwe. It will also feature four Zambians artists who live and work abroad from Norway, Switzerland and the USA as well as a total number of 13 locally based artists from Lusaka, Luapula, Copperbelt and Central Provinces. Organised by the Visual Arts Council of Zambia, this one is bound to be entertaining.

By and large, the 20^th Session of the UNWTO General Assembly  is expected to be  an arts and crafts blitz with several spaces for exhibiting items ranging from basketry, jewellery, semi-precious stones, books, photographs,  music CD’s and DVD’s, fabrics, traditional foods and drinks, prints, paintings and sculptures.

But as much as there is considerable excitement among the local curio vendors such as Mukuni Park Curio Market’s Walubita, there are also fears and rumours of ferocious competition from rival curio vendors from the capital and beyond with an estimated 500 visiting merchants among them shrewd and highly skilled Congolese and Tanzanian craftsmen.

Hyperrealism: realer than the real thing

By Andrew Mulenga

Drawn Face VI, (2009), pencil on paper,
42 x 54 inches, Private Collection,
Mountain View CA, USA,
by Dirk Dzimirsky (courtesy-artist)

The work of Hyperrealists is so lifelike that a pencil drawing resembles a black and white photograph. The results can be so eerily realistic that every feature is drawn or painted in photographic precision at mind-blowing resolutions that could have been produced by any high-end professional camera.

With his enthusiastic students busy scratching away with their pencils against white sheets of paper during a drawing class, this writer’s art lecturer, the late Daliso Mwale once said: “if you can draw as good as a camera (photograph) you might as well stop”.

In shorter terms, Mwale was probably saying, “what’s the point”? But Dirk Dzimirsky, a German Hyperrealist does not agree at all.

“That goes into the same direction as the popular saying: ‘If you know how to do it, it is not art anymore’.  For me it is always the other way around. If I did not know how to do it or if I could not draw decently I would stop,” Dzimirsky told the Hole In the Wall in an interview from his base in Bocholt, a small town in North Rhine Westfalia, Germany “But on the other hand, if I had the feeling I am doing only mere copies of a photo that is just technical skill I would also stop. For me every work of art to be good must have poetry and feelings and the art I have chosen for myself is where I find my poetry, which I understand, can be overlooked too easily.”

Dzimirsky a 44-year-old who has been drawing all his life but had not really considered becoming an artist. He was initially interested in music but discovered his real talent lies in art. It was not until 2005 however, that he took up a career in art, at age 35. Completely self-taught, he decided to become a hyperrealist and has never looked back since.

“I grew up in the 1980s and the art in Germany back then was absolutely nothing that would inspire me to become an artist myself. I got a real bad opinion about art at that time. By doing realistic art I always felt outside but today I do not care and just do what I like. Luckily I am not limited to Europe with my art,” he says.



Melting Ice Crown, (2012) Oil on canvas,
31.5 x 47.2 inches , by Dirk Dzimirsky (courtesy-artist)

Although he believes his type of art is also quite technical, he declares an artist’s work must have feeling and personality. Like in music, he says, when you play a music piece on an instrument and it sounds like a technical exercise because it is too stiff and all notes are played with the same loudness, it becomes boring. He says it is only when you add imperfections like varying the loudness of notes and changes to the tempo then you add feeling and you actually start making music and that this is true with art. For him it still has to be recognisable, realistic art but with small imperfections in the right places he adds ‘music’ to his work.

Other than likening his technique to that of a musician, he also compares himself to a detailed writer, to him; every tonal shade of a pencil or paint is set right where it is supposed to be, similar to a paragraph, coma or full stop in the work of an essayist or biographer.

“The sum of all my pencil lines or brush strokes describes a person. By adding a stroke there or a pencil mark here I feel like describing aspects of a person and even about the character. But at times I also  feel like I am actually not very patient but just very talkative with pencils and brushes,” he explains.

Speaking of lacking patience, he describes how sometimes as an artist it can become quite risky when one becomes irritable during the course of work as one may end up ruining, hours, weeks  or in his case months of work by a simple smudge of the pencil. Dzimirsky as well as any other serious artist or purist does not believe in using an eraser. In fact to the unenlightened, it would be interesting for you to learn that in accademic circles erasers are not allowed in art class.



Unused Truth, (2013) Oil on canvas,
59 x 59 inches, Dirk Dzimirsky (courtesy-artist)

“A drawing or a painting can be like a diva. You are trying so hard to do anything to please her but she is never satisfied. But I have not really ruined works before. Unlike most hyperrealists I do not work my way down from the top left corner to the bottom right and I do not consider every part of a work as equally important as every other part,” says the artist who uses photographs as references but is never after a perfect reproduction only using them very loosely once he establishes the proportions.

“I like to have loose and quickly drawn areas in my work that helps to keep the focus on the parts that I consider important, like a face or certain areas of a face. But it can be also a detail in the hair or a part of an ear, for example. The lack of patience helps to heighten the overall appearance in my work, in my opinion. Makes it less technically and adds more feelings to the image.”

He explains that the brain is trained to differentiate between important and less important information. We see so many photos every day that we are only briefly glancing at them. When you draw or paint in the hyperrealist style you still abstract and simplify very much as you never can make an exact copy of a photo. That is why, he believes, people often say “Wow” when viewing hyperrealist work, because it is kind of refreshing for the brain.

With regards technique and theme, he is predominantly a portrait artist, but water as a thematic subject is a recurring element in his works. Two good examples of such work are Drawn Face VI, (2009) and the more recent  Melting Ice Crown, (2012). Both depict the close-ups of faces with intense expressions, the first a lightly bearded man with water splashed across his face, the second a young girl with water cascading down her face. Both subjects have their eyes closed yet feel so alive by their expressions. While the two works are not in colour, the picture of the girl is actually a monochrome painting, which is painted in such a way that it resembles pencil, the medium used on the male subject.

“Water gave me the chance to show faces in a different way. The water distorts the face somewhat and adds a lot of colours and different lights, almost like a kaleidoscope. It helps to change the visual interests away from the usual parts in a face, which are the eyes, the mouth and the nose,” he explains

“Since I started this in 2008 (of course I was not the first one) I notice that it obviously inspired people to do something similar. I have the feeling that it gets overused, so it might be time for me doing something else.”

Dirk Dzimirsky at work in his studio
in Bocholt, Germany (courtesy-artist)

He says that creating work that is so realistic does have its downside, because every now and then people would say his work cannot be real and he probably uses some form of trickery, but the does not bother him. He acknowledges that there are a lot of artists cheating on the internet, so he understands why people get suspicious. But he publicly exhibits his works and people can confirm that they are not photographs.

When he took up art professionally,  focused almost only on drawing which he describes as his first love but since last year he has taken up painting and evidently, his paintings are just as hyper realistic as his drawings as can be seen in a recent work entitled Used Truth (oil on canvas, 2013), the spellbinding portrait of a young lady holding a watering can. She is dripping with beads of water and is executed in photographic precision down to the last eyelash and strand of hair. The black background and play on light and shadow enhance the image’s realistic appearance.

Professionally, Dzimirsky is not attached to any particular gallery and prefers to go about the comercial aspect of art by himself, although he does conduct drawing workshops for a limited period within the year. He has exhibted extensively in the USA, the UK and Germany at Principle Gallery, Alexandria, USA, Courtauld Institute of Art , London, UK, Stadt Hamminkeln, Germany , Williams & Co Gallery, New York, USA - Aqua Art Miami, USA  and the Blackheath Gallery, London.

Nevertheless,  as much as the works of Dzimirsky are a welcome and refreshing shift from the sometimes infuriating conceptual art that appears to be consuming the style of every artist in its path, Hyperrealism can also serve as a reminder of what the hand can do without the aid of the technology we are so inclined to nowadays, a reminder that without the aid of high-tech gadgetry the artist’s human cognizance still has delicate powers of observation, hyperrealism is a celebration of being human.

Arts forum to be exciting element of UNWTO

By Andrew Mulenga

Organisers of Zambia’s very own international festival, the Shungu Namutitima International Film Festival (SHUNAFFoZ) have reported that 2013 may turn out to be the biggest year for the event so far as it is officially endorsed as one of the UNWTO General Conference sideline entertainment events.

An annual event now in its 8th year, SHUNAFFoZ  a not-for-profit project of Vilole Images Productions (VIP) will run between Friday, 23rd to Saturday, 31st August, with a vision focused on: “promoting the use of film as a tool to highlight issues on women, youth, girls and women-with-disabilities, capacity building, development and trade in film/television products in Zambia and around Africa, and the promoting of Livingstone as a preferred location for filming and as a tourism destination of choice,” states a press release made available by festival coordinator Mumbi Mwape, a Kabwe-based  Independent Documentary Film Maker and cultural activist.



Shungu Namutitima International Film Festival

Executive Director Musola Kaseketi

According to the release, currently, film submissions have been received from regional and international filmmakers and SHUNAFFoZ is part and parcel of an even broader national initiative to market and expose Zambian filmmakers and their products.

“It is also a base for non-credentialed training of producers, directors, cinematographers, distributors, promoters and other creative and cultural industry stakeholders. This, it is hoped, will enhance the development of the film making industry in Zambia in the medium to long term, evolving into a source of employment for the many talented aspirant and upcoming filmmakers working as a cog in a machine in empowering a people and creating a self-sustaining creative and cultural industry with excellent opportunities for further backward and forward, as well as horizontal and vertical investments for an integrated synergetic national economy.”

 Zambia being a country whose film industry is still in its infancy with no formal film training school save for short courses in video production at institutions such as ZAMCOM, the organisers, headed by award winning film maker Musola Kaseketi the Festival Executive Director and CEO at Vilole Images Productions have continued, to use the film festival as a platform for “networking and the assertive sharing and acquiring of critical professional film industry skills for the discerning cineaste.”

 This year, as part of its training and discussions programme, SHUNAFFoZ have included what may turn out to be quite an interesting “Arts Discussion Forum” that will critically examine the current worldwide phenomenon of reality television.

 Themed “Are Reality Talent Shows a bonus or a minus for the budding creative and cultural industry in Zambia and Africa as a whole?” the forum is expected to be an intensive yet interactive informal arts education and cultural management practice experience-sharing with the festival audience and the local, regional and international arts and cultural fraternity at large. Through their website and other media, the organisers have invited participation by all interested academic, creative, cultural, tourism and business.

 “Lately, Zambia’s public television channel ZNBC, like most cable programming, has been deluged with locally produced “Talent Search/Shows” in the increasingly popular “Reality Shows” genre, with today’s and tomorrow’s wannabe big-stars across the predominantly performance art discipline vying for that ultimate stardom tag, Hollywood-style, with all the usual trappings: winner-takes-all windfall cash award, studio and/or recording contract, the all alluring promise of almost guaranteed commercial success up for the grabs as staked by the often well-resourced sponsoring corporate and service businesses, a permanent dangle,” state the organizers concerning the forthcoming arts forum.

 They further declare that most of these participants have had little formal arts education and arts production, or arts management training and it is against such a background of next-to-none creative arts and culture management or arts development education in Zambia and around most of Africa - private or public that the discussion forum invites papers or presentations that will bridge the divide or will seek to compare and contrast the business and often product-marketing and so profit-inspired ethos in creative arts production and cultural practices rather than a nurturing contemporary arts education development systems.

 “Discussion papers or presentations may reflect on, but not be limited to, the fundamental nature and motivations of artistic creative productions or activities of indigenous cultural groups, as to how some of their time-honoured traditional methods have helped sustain some of now UNESCO-recognised cultural communities and their practices like the Makishi Masquerade/Likumbi lya Mize and Nyau Mask/Gule wam’Kulu in Zambia,”

 “Or a range of other creativity in the fields of film, other new media, literary arts, fashion and design, performance or visual arts. Can contention be raised that cultural communities are more transparent with better deliverables and resulting in measureable more objective outcomes in the molding of individual performing and creative artists?”

 The forum question also probes whether an argument is to be made that contemporary corporate tailored and television-based programmes in Zambia, past and present, loosely modeled around the brand events like “Idols”, “[America’s] Got Talent”, “EuroVision Song Contest” and the ever so popular  “Big Brother Africa”, etc., at the regional and continental levels is just such the antidote needed by Africa’s fledgling creative and cultural industries to bringing about new audiences, increased re-investment, and infrastructural improvements – in arts education and the economic potential of the creative and cultural tourism sector, in Zambia as elsewhere?

 SHUNAFFoZ interrogates risks posed by apparent imitation and mimicry of western talent shows only to produce arts and culture industry parodies at best.

 It suggests those gravely concerned are worried saying, there is a systematic and unconscious perhaps even over-commercialization of authentic artistic, cultural and heritage production, or are these perceptions just being imagined by a section of contemporary society lacking inventiveness?

 “What suggestions of some of the proven traditional methods, if any, of nurturing and mentoring, can make for adoption and incorporation, to sustain and engender originality in contemporary artistic and cultural creative practices with benefits for the local industry and making a meaningful impactful global presence even?”

The SHUNAFFoZ Arts Discussion Forum is to take place at the Livingstone Museum on Monday, 26 August 2013 and should provide for some interesting discourse depending on the participants as well as the quality of papers, presentations and arguments raised in response to the call.

It is exciting however that the organizers have broadened the forum beyond the phenomenon of reality television but have also allowed room for the discussion of the perceived “over-commercialization of authentic artistic, cultural and heritage” events and activities” of which much can be said.

Anyone who has attended a cultural ceremony in Zambia over the past few years can attest to the fact that, ceremony participants, fairgrounds and in certain instances chiefs and headmen can be seen clad in the brightest corporate merchandising paraphernalia such as t-shirts and caps. Traditional ceremonies, as we call them have become battlegrounds for ferocious corporate crusades particularly between the mobile telecommunication companies and banking houses some of whom are rumored to pay as little as K1,000 to have their large colours splashed around to be documented and therefore immortalized in photographs for eternity.

Nevertheless, as much as the arts forum will be an exciting component of SHUNAFFoZ during the UNWTO, there are  quite a number of things lined up for the film festival. Other activities are a “Grand Opening Night under a warm African summer sky”, public and outreach film screenings, non-credentialed filmmaking skills workshops, a special Kids Day for children,  and an Awards and Humanitarian Recognition closing night, each at Livingstone’s creative and tourist partner-venues.