_Rock bottom_, the last of Zimbabwe's Shona Sculpture pioneers

The name Zimbabwe is derived from the Shona phrase dzimba dzemabwe, meaning “houses of stone”, an homage to the ancient kingdom of the ancestral vaShona people. Their capital was what is known today as the Great Zimbabwe Ruins.

In fact, present day Zimbabwe actually is a house of stone, rich in diverse minerals and precious and semi-precious stones. Zimbabwe is known for its stone carvings and masonry dating back to the Great Zimbabwe days, 1250-1450 AD. A Zimbabwean bird carved of stone is a national emblem appearing on the national flag and bank notes.

Zimbabwe is known for its stone carvings and masonry dating back to the Great Zimbabwe days, 1250-1450 AD.

Shona people had a relationship with the soil--“ivhu”--a relationship that would lead to war and rebellion when white colonial settlers tried to take the land. The abundant stone of Zimbabwe was linked closely to Shona spiritual and cultural practices. Historically, stone works were not exported nor created as objects of art.

In 1889, German explorer Willi Posselt was the first European to steal carved Zimbabwean stones, marking the external world’s first encounter with Zimbabwean stone works.1

McEwen was keen on the mores of African people which led him to become acquainted with the godfather of modern Shona Sculpture, Joram Mariga. Mariga and his early soapstone carvings prompted McEwen to encourage early stone carvers to work on pieces that reflected their culture. A school was established by the gallery and soon attracted more artists, many of whom had already been exposed to some form of art training in early mission schools.

These artists included Henry Mukarobgwa, Joseph Ndandarika, John Takawira, Thomas Mukarobgwa, Henry Munyaradzi, Fanizani Akuda, Nicholas Mukomberanwa, Slyvester Mubayi, Bernard Matemera, Boira Mteki, Moses Masaya, Bernard Takawira and Lazaraus Takawira, who made up the first generation. The budding art movement was financed by a farmer, Tom Blomefield, in 1966. Artists set up Tengenenge Sculpture Community at Blomefield’s farm.

From Tengenenge to the world! After setting up this first collective, other communities sprouted in Zimbabwe from Chapungu Sculpture Park to Chitungwiza Art Centre. The first generation of sculptors worked to put Zimbabwean Shona Sculpture on the map nationally and internationally.

The first generation of sculptors worked to put Zimbabwean Shona Sculpture on the map nationally and internationally.

Slyvester Mubayi, a first generation artist who died in late 2022, inspired me to write this piece. An internationally acclaimed sculptor and “elder” of the Shona Sculptor community. A 2005 review by Michael Shepard in the Sunday Telegraph remarked, "Now that Henry Moore is dead, who is the greatest living stone sculptor? Were I to choose, I would choose from three Zimbabwean sculptors – Sylvester Mubayi, Nicholas Mukomberanwa and Joseph Ndandarika". To have these artists juxtaposed with Henry Moore demonstrates the excellence and importance of Shona Sculpture.

Second and third generation sculptors have managed to keep the art form alive, acting as custodians of the vaShona people, chiseling one sculpture at a time. Sadly, economic conditions in Zimbabwe and a lack of collectors in the country have resulted in many of the original sculptures being exported. Our heritage and customs go away with them.

The biggest Shona Sculpture collection in the world is at Zimbabwe Sculpture: a Tradition in Stone, a permanent exhibit of sculpture at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in the state of Georgia, USA. Comparing that with the number of art pieces at Robert Mugabe International Airport in Harare, you will understand why we Zimbabweans need to set up more permanent collections in our own country. It’s a sad commentary that it’s in the southern United States, not Zimbabwe, where the largest Shona stone collection is to be seen.

There have been efforts to set up collections in Zimbabwe, and some notable pieces can be seen at the University of Zimbabwe Great Hall and Library, the National Art Gallery of Zimbabwe, and the Parliament of Zimbabwe. But there are no more than a few pieces on display.

With the whole first generation of Shona Sculptors nearly gone, their works of art will scatter. More private parties and the government need to buy the art pieces and set up permanent collections around Zimbabwe. This would preserve the Shona Sculpture history in Dzimbabwe, the House of Stone. We must save ourselves from a great loss, forfeiting the very last of the first of Zimbabwe’s Shona Sculpture culture.

1 More than five decades after Posselt’s theft, Zimbabwean stone carvings evolved to what we know today as Shona Sculpture. The first generation of Shona sculptors emerged in the nineteen fifties under the patronage of then Rhodes National Gallery (RNG) director Frank McEwen. Today the RNG is the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (NGZ).

See © Brown-Lowe, Robin (2003). The Lost City of Solomon and Sheba: An African Mystery.

Q&A: Artist Charlie Wooley

Continuing our series of interviews with creatives navigating a post-Covid world, Tess O’Bamber, Content Manager for Emerging Voices, talks with poet and designer Charlie Wooley about how the pandemic affected her creative process.

What inspired you to launch ‘The Hidden Pearl Studio’?

I was going through a long period of chronic sickness during which my capacity for doing anything had been very limited. I was encouraged to start painting and be creative again. And as I started creating, the work became greeting cards and prints. I’ve always been a lover of greeting cards and have been profoundly impacted by brave loving words written in them by people in my life. That is how The Hidden Pearl Studio was born. As I healed and my capacity grew, the business grew alongside me.

How did you find the lockdowns affected your creative process? Were you living with others at the time?

Lockdown wasn't anything dramatically new for me. I was very familiar with staying at home during my years of sickness. Not that I found it easy by any means, but I'd had practice. I found creativity flourished during lockdown as life was so slow. There was frustration and boredom, which can be a recipe for creating. I wrote a lot of poetry and painted much more than I usually had time for. The poetry and painting were part of how I escaped from hearing the 'bad news' and how I processed all that was going on. I was living with my mum, and my brother had gotten 'locked down' with us. He lived in another country but couldn't fly home. Strangely, it was a time of togetherness, living slower, and making memories. It was also messy and totally imperfect.

The poetry and painting were part of how I escaped from hearing the 'bad news' and how I processed all that was going on.

I had also just launched my first poetry book which occurred during the first month of lockdown. People received the words of hope with hungry hearts, and ended up sending them to their friends who sent them to their friends, and so on. It was really beautiful and a privilege to be able to offer hope and peace through The Moon & Her Friend.

I think artists, poets and musicians have a significant role to play in these difficult times. Do you have a vision for how The Hidden Pearl Studio can influence your local community and beyond as we recover from the pandemic and look towards the future?

I totally agree with that statement. Art is so powerful for affecting the worlds of our hearts. My hope is that whether through my greeting cards and the words people are inspired to write inside, through my art and wall prints, or through my poetry books, that inner worlds will be made more whole. I'm passionate and fascinated by the notion of a Kind Creator. We are alive to love and be loved, and that is no small thing.

What is your advice for creatives who’ve struggled to keep going over the past few years?

My advice is: take the pressure off, and play. When we were little children, most of us walked in creativity like breathing. It comes very naturally to humans. But often pain and fear cloud it. And there's pressure and performance.

When we were little children, most of us walked in creativity like breathing. It comes very naturally to humans. But often pain and fear cloud it.

But go find some art supplies you've never used or used as a kid, or go to a workshop for fun, start a scrap book or sketchbook. Make a mess. It's so integral to our human experience to play, and that's what creativity is.

Visit The Hidden Pearl Studio

Follow Charlie on Instagram: @thehiddenpearlstudio

Where are you from?

The politics of home.

Where are you from? I have been asked this more times than I can remember. And having lived in several places, the idea of home is sometimes elusive.

I barely lived in my Tamil hometown. It’s of some sadness to my family that having lived so far away from there, my Tamil is rather a modern metropolitanasque rendering. It’s a version of what I picked up from my parents and also borrowed from the movies I grew up watching, peppered with English and Hindi. But most times, my word mixup and jumbled pronunciation just makes for an easy laugh and gives my family more reasons to remark fondly on my silliness.

Time in Singapore was a brief stint from which I only have baby memory. In other words, I remember nothing except for memories I have created in retrospect watching videos my parents took on a rather bulky handycam.

The place I spent most of my life in, Allahabad, no longer holds the home I grew up in. The structure remains, but now is a modified, rented space. It no longer resembles the home I knew.

The place I spent most of my life in, Allahabad, no longer holds the home I grew up in. The structure remains, but now is a modified, rented space. It no longer resembles the home I knew.

My parents currently live in a different city I only visit when I go to see them. I have no roots there. The home they’ve built makes for a strange experience. The house has the persons and objects that serve as reminders of familiarity stemming from childhood yet the setup is as strange as a stranger’s house.

My hostel room in Mumbai, where I lived as an undergraduate, is an in-between space. Without the people who housed it with me then, it’s lost its hold on me. And my little room in the university halls at Leeds, where I spent much time earning my Master’s during lockdown, has changed residents twice. No longer mine to call home.

I now live in London, in a place I’m building up to be home, but far away from the home country that shaped me. Home remains accessible, and yet elusive. And so, when people ask me, where are you from, what do I tell them?

~

‘Where are you from’ is really two questions. One comes from innocent curiosity, asked by someone who wants to know you and your history. One who sees the beauty in colour, but does not compare shade. And then there is one of otherisation; that attempts to place you anywhere but here. At worst, it is a racial profiling to remind you of your place. At best, it is to tell you how much space you are allowed to occupy.

Some months ago, I was at a friend’s birthday party. We had all gathered in a park on a sunny day to enjoy some picnicking. Someone asked me where I was from. Since moving to the UK, for the sake of brevity, and to avoid the painful task of explaining where in India, I simply say ‘India’. While India is huge and various, and I have many homes there, if I venture into the complexities, the answer would run pages. So unless I feel we can afford a long conversation, I start simple.

So yes, I was asked where I was from. In this context, it was the coming together of various social groups where a lot of us were strangers [the only person I knew there was my friend whose birthday it was], so this question was thrown around to everyone from a place of simple knowing.

But then this person specifically picked out the only other brown person in the group and said, ‘you are also Indian right!’, motioning us to talk to each other. I did not know this other brown person, but having heard her converse so far, I could see she had a proper British accent. Not the I-came-here-yesterday-and-picked-up-an-accent kind, but the I-have-lived-here-all-my-life-and-so-I-speak-this-way kind. It was pretty obvious to me she would consider herself British having probably grown up here. I was right. She clarified that her parents were of Indian origin, but she was born and raised here. She explained this with a half smile, half smirk that I am quite familiar with. It’s the yes I look different but why do I have to keep confirming my Britishness look. And I could only sympathise.

Reading about this episode, some would ask - what is so wrong about a person being recognised as Indian if they look Indian? The answer lies very much in the motivation and intent behind this act of identification. What was the point of singling her out for me to talk to? The person could have thought, same culture so same interests. But that would also be a dilution of our metropolitan selves that don’t fit into one culture.

Whenever in the UK I am asked about my origins, I say with much ease and without hesitation that I am Indian. But for my friend’s British-born Indian-origin friend, identity is a more complicated subject. She is expected to be a certain way because she looks a certain way. But she acts like a person from around here, because she is from around here. She is stuck between a camp that wants her to exude Indian-ness (but just enough, not too much) and another camp that is seeing her as betraying her origins due to her Britishness. Yet if she were one to put out her Indianness on colourful display, she would be blamed by some for not trying to assimilate. She could easily be criticised for being not Indian enough, not British enough, too Indian, too British, all at the same time.

Whenever in the UK I am asked about my origins, I say with much ease and without hesitation that I am Indian. But for my friend’s British-born Indian-origin friend, identity is a more complicated subject.

After the awkward introduction, the both of us did converse a fair bit that evening. And the interesting common ground we found was not our Indian roots, but rather our love for Leeds! Turns out we both went to Leeds for university. That is what broke the ice, not our brownness.

Later on in a pub, she opened up about living in a really white town growing up. She talked about how she would be given looks, and had things yelled at her. I told her I have had the looks, but luckily not the crude comments. Even between the two of us, two seemingly similar looking brown skinned people, where do you come from holds different connotations. And therein lies the complexity of identity that many fail to grasp in their blanket opinions on how to feel about race.

~

The last time I was asked where I was from, the question came from a few homeless people I was interviewing. I was asking them how it was for them this winter. They looked at me a bit bewildered to begin with - why is this odd girl going around in the darkness of the evening, prodding us with questions? I wasn’t sure at first if they meant where I was from, as in where I lived currently and set out from that day, or where I was from, as my ethnic/national origin. I replied, “You mean where I come from originally?” Yes, he said. “India”, I responded.

While this exchange was happening, a fellow homeless person gave out a snort and laughed. He said, “You cannot ask these questions anymore!” He was snarkily referring to this controversy involving a British black charity worker Ngozi Fulani who recently was pestered with questions about her origins by a member of the royal household. Despite being born in Britain and clarifying that, the late queen’s lady in waiting (also Prince William’s godmother) kept pressing her to disclose where her people came from.

And I think the incident is really useful in bringing out the subtleties of racial profiling. While where do you come from can indeed be an innocent question posed to anyone, people of colour have scores to say about their unique experiences with that question. A lot of the time it’s used to make you feel like ‘the other’. And yet when challenged, people can hide behind a claim of innocence behind that question. Therein lies the reality of today’s racial politics. In an environment where overt racial slurs and comments are socially unacceptable in many places, people resort to masked commentary. Maybe some do it without conscious understanding. But pointing it out is important for the process of unlearning.

In an environment where overt racial slurs and comments are socially unacceptable in many places, people resort to masked commentary.

My own recent encounter with this question left me confused. On that same day, I was asked that question by three different homeless people. Two of them, who were Polish, reacted positively. They were happy I had come from somewhere else and possibly made it. Despite their own situation, they made this known and made me feel comfortable. And then there were a few British people who took this as an opportunity to react defensively against the incident involving Ngozi Fulani.

But, either way, I came out thinking there is something truly poetic about being asked about home by people who unfortunately are struggling with the concept of home themselves. Their home is transient. And it forced me to think of home without a sense of attachment to a physical space. It made me think of home in the form of all the warmth and love I have had, whichever place I have lived in, whatever place I come from. So the next time someone asks me where I come from, I will be tempted to just say everywhere.