Posted on Wednesday 20-06-2007
Painting more than his share of bases
By Stephen Garan'anga
Many young people are "streamed" into professions working towards the security of marriage, children to support them in their retirement and comfort when darkness falls.
In Zimbabwe today there is the "arts industry" the arts presuming to promise this security as much as accountancy, law, medicine and teaching. But there are also young pioneers in the artists - entrepreneurs, empire builders.
As the arts industry expands, as more people become artists, as there is more competition, more of a razor's edge, visual artists demand new services to help them get there, managers, promoters and for visual artists, curators. Shadreck Chitima from the School of Creative Art and Design at Chinhoyi University of Technology, with practical experience in curatorship during his two-year internship at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe; a couple of weeks ago made his first and far from fledgling effort as an independent Curator.
A luminous old boy of Ellis Robbins Boys High School he animated the stentorian space of the School Hall with an exhibition of paintings called "The Days of Our Lives". This dealt with the way Zimbabweans act out the processes of social and spiritual transformation radically altering lives and lifestyles. Each artist expressed the way people come to terms with these processes, so that they benefit their lives. Chitima's stable of artists was of high repute, Mercy Moyo 2007 Nama Visual Arts Award winner, Masimba Hwati among them. His audience was largely the school's art students, more than a sea of faces, each individual interested about a new opportunity for a future career. Swarmed after the opening, Chitima answered their questions with ease. It is Chitima's ambition to offer his services as a curator in Zimbabwe where he feels he is most needed, unraveling the tangles of sculptures in bush settings giving credence to late artists through retrospectives, creating new and hitherto unthought of spaces for the presentation of art. He may or may not become the high flying one stop curator of Biennales the world over. But in Zimbabwe he has trod where others should follow. Some artists lie back and say "the work will do it all". The best of artists can have a "bad painting day" or "bad sculpture day" as a woman has a "bad hair day". They can plateau they can stop working and no one thinks the worse of them. For the less established artist the ladder is high, it is easy to fall off the rungs, and the curatorial processes will help them reach the top.
The curator disposes artists and indeed gallery directors of many responsibilities. The curator establishes the rationale for an exhibition determines what kind of exhibition is best suited the artist at a particular stage of their development. The curator's selection ensures the work is of the right calibre to be exhibited. The curator gets the artist away from "the gallery will do it all" mentality and teaches the principles and basics of presentation of their work, framing and mounting for paintings, sprucing up sculptures making their work is suitable for public consumption. The space between paintings arid sculptures, the room they have to breathe and have their being is crucial to the success of any exhibition. One sculpture one painting out of place can ruin a show. The curator makes the best of the space where the work is seen, chooses work best suited to the space. The curator may alter the appearance of the space, must be designer, builder, painter of walls and bases. The curator is responsible for "hanging" or "setting up" the show, work and space working together. On the theoretical side the curator writes essays for catalogues –which might position the work in terms of the overall development of the medium, interrogate the work that the viewer to ask questions, moves beyond the passivity of just seeing, thinks for themselves about the work.
The visual artists lag far behind their musician counterparts with their managers and promoters and lawyers defending copyright issues and minders to keep them away from harm. The time has come for these people to guard the interests of visual artists, to allow them to get on with their work without the full scale organization of their lives which today is largely theirs and theirs alone.
There are fewer galleries in Harare than there are artists who need galleries. And artists in Zimbabwe are not often equipped with the wherewithal and skills to organise and promote their own exhibitions. The plethora of informal structures for the visual arts cries out for curators. Many need writing to trace their history, to interrogate and position their place the history of stone sculpture in Zimbabwe. Bush Bound groups isolated from markets would benefit from exhibitions held in metropolaes Short courses in self curatorship are needed for these groups as much as the business courses which are becoming fashionable. Chitima has done it the hard way - "he has painted more than his share of bases, typed and put on walls more than his share of labels, ordered his share of wine glasses, forced words from the mouths of artists disinclined to talk about their work. He has ordered his share of chairs and drinks, but he looks further afield to his exhibitions on website and Google. With the added advantages of looks and good character and of being an artist himself, he is "out there" for the profession of a curator in Zimbabwe, to make it standard practice for all initiatives exhibiting the visual arts in Zimbabwe.
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