Pavilion of Zimbabwe

Title of the exhibition: “Seeing Ourselves: Questioning our geographical landscape and the space we occupy from yesterday, today and tomorrow”  
Exhibitors: Tapfuma Gutsa, Misheck Masamvu, Berry Bickle and Calvin Dondo
Commissioner: Mrs. Doreen Sibanda
Curator: Raphael Chikukwa
Venue: Church of Santa Maria della Pietà, Calle della Pietà, Castello 3701

	The Zimbabwe Pavilion at Venice
Entrance to the Zimbabwe Pavilion

The Zimbabwe Pavilion at the Venice Biennale is pivotal in establishing a platform after the isolation of many years. The Zimbabwean pavilion will provide a rare opportunity to spark discussions about the role of artists in a society.
 Zimbabwe has become a Zone of Silence with little access to the platforms of exchange through which it can communicate. It is in this view that a Zimbabwean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale will break the silence.”
Raphael Chikukwa, Curator

Zimbabwe Crates arriving from the airport

The exhibition ‘Seeing Ourselves’ curated by Raphael Chikukwa, features the work of four artists:  Berry Bickle, Calvin Dondo, Misheck Masamvu and Tapfuma Gutsa.

Offloading of Zimbabwe Crates

Works are presented in the mediums of painting, photography, video installation and sculpture.

‘Seeing Ourselves’ showcases Zimbabwean artistic practice that is innovative, self–reflexive and critical. It creates new positions and asks us to reconsider ‘What is contemporary art?’

For more than fifty years the reputation of Zimbabwean visual art has been dominated by the high-profile success of the Shona sculpture movement. This has meant that other art forms have been marginalised. But Zimbabwe has been moving with the times; artists are tapping into new mediums, they have been exposed to diverse influences and studying and exhibiting internationally.

‘Seeing Ourselves’ is a necessary, timely survey of current trends in contemporary Zimbabwean art.

Photographer Calvin Dondo speaks of an interest in ‘citizenship, love, loss and cultural heritage, in migration and the metaphorical ties which attract and bind people together’. The photographic series he is presenting in Venice explores the dynamic of mixed families, their high and low moments. 

Veteran sculptor Tapfuma Gutsa is concerned with issues of inequality within and between societies; his two installations are comprised of found objects. Refusing to be branded or limited by the designation ‘Shona Sculptor’, his work – which increasingly looks to new media – challenges perceived expectations

The presentation by Berry Bickle poses questions pertaining to landscape and migration.  Bickle belongs to a generation of African artists who emerged in the early 1990s when theoretical discourses about post-colonialism, cross-cultural identities and globalization began to question the western artistic monopoly.

The young emerging painter Misheck Masamvu explores issues and relationships of social hierarchy. The artist will present five large-scale paintings and a mixed-media bench, Deliverance. On being selected to represent Zimbabwe at the Venice Biennale, Masamvu remarked:

‘I wish to produce a body of work pregnant of optimism and hope.
I wish to stimulate positive energy and bring to attention the need to create new emblems and motifs that encourages dialogue.
I desire to find alternative solutions to the sometimes dire circumstances we come across … ‘

It is the hope that with this first, historically momentous, exhibition of Zimbabwean art at the 54th International Art Exhibition la Biennale di Venenzia, a vital dialogue with the international art scene will be established. The exhibiting artists do not limit themselves to Zimbabwean issues but also look to, and hold relevance for, wider global currents.

Information: National Gallery of Zimbabwe - www.nationalgallery.co.zw
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