Kudzanai Chiurai

Kudzanai Chiurai (born 1981) is a Zimbabwean artist and activist.His repertoire of art combines the use of mixed media which involves the use of paintings, drawings, videos and photographs to address and tackle social, political and cultural issues in Zimbabwe. Quotes I think of the issues that we have to address, this issue that we live now in a post-colony—I think this has been the fundamental idea, that we are in fact living in post-colonial societies. I doubt that we are in that situation at all. For me, we live in colonial futures. This is what we are grappling with. Well, the exhibition in Zimbabwe is based on a short story that I’d written, and I try and recreate the short story as an exhibition by taking various elements from it and then reconstructing them. The exhibition essentially is various aspects of the short story, of this particular central character’s life as drawings, as sculptures, and also through video. You walk through this person’s life in this post-colony as he tries to reflect upon it. In an interview For me, it is because the short story is in some ways based on personal experience. Part of this is captured in the short film. He reflects upon his childhood and having gone through a Catholic missionary school. I went to a Catholic school. I worked that into the exhibition as to how religion has played an integral role in assisting the whole colonial process, the whole disarming process that took place. That is also where some of the photographs in “We Live In Silence,” the one with the crucifixion, for example, also came into the exhibition. There’s also religious iconography that was in the National Gallery that I then took from their collection and then incorporated it into the show. So, you almost travel through, listen to characters explain from a political perspective, a religious perspective, a personal point of view. Then he reflects upon what the future holds, and it’s the title of the exhibition: “We Need New Names. In an interview In the sense that by saying we need new names I think it is indirectly inferring that we need new presidential names. So in allowing the name of the show, it was a massive surprise. I’ve heard that people who went to the show have also been speaking about it too, like, ‘Oh, new names and new myths. This is something certainly that we do need to create, those new names and new myths.” I think that’s very significant in looking at colonial histories. [Patriarchy] is one of the things that essentially has to be addressed, because if we don’t address it then we don’t have post-colonies existing in any form. We’re still kind of grappling with a colonial future, where it fundamentally shifts. We’re institutionalized on a very grand scale. By addressing those particular myths, by de-mything them in some way, we then start to move forward politically and socially and economically, because by just addressing that one thing, others can shift considerably. Like land rights, it was one of the first things to go for women when colonization happened. For me then, those land rights become a fundamental thing, because that was economic independence for women. It’s essentially trying to look at the present without a linear sense of time. So, that’s like building one layer on top of another, on top of another. I’m trying to compress all of those different times with different points in our history and collapse them into one single moment. The role of the artist is to make revolution irresistible. The idea for the video came from a charity dinner I had read about, hosted by Nelson Mandela. The dinner became infamous because it was attended by Liberian warlord Charles Taylor and Naomi Campbell, whom he was reported to have sent uncut diamonds to afterwards. Some of the invited guests would later testify against Taylor at The Hague. It was an interesting dinner, a paradox of virtue: figures with distinguished backgrounds in politics, entertainment, and humanitarian causes all gathered for a charity dinner, also attended by a man who was rumored to have “eaten the hearts of his enemies” and would later be convicted of war crimes. In some way it had notions of the Divine, and [it seemed] the biblical Last Supper would be a great representation of that dinner. The stereotypes you might be referring to only narrow the perception of a continent that is diverse and complex. You will find stereotypes if that is what you are looking for, but if you applied this work to a different context, you would find similar stereotypes throughout history: the Spanish Inquisition, one of many prominent examples, but the list of crimes against humanity behind a thinly veiled pretext of religion is endless. The Christian faith was an ally and accomplice to the colonial project; it restructured and reorganized the lives of indigenous populations by centralizing them around churches and the missionary. This can be said of almost all colonized territories. All thought and production would emanate from the churches and missionaries, and the submission of the peasant population was one of the church’s objectives. In essence, the video has very little to do with the stereotypes you are thinking of or alluding too. By interrogating the role of religion, we get to understand the destabilizing nature religion had on indigenous communities, and its consequences. When missionaries centralized the activities of the community around the church or mission, it often resulted in displacement, leaving room for colonial expansion in the spaces once occupied. In some cases, the indigenous people became a source of free labor for the missionary. Religious instruction also set them at odds with their beliefs and ontology. This would ferment in resentment and conflict in the years that followed. In an interview The Church set out to convert the population under false pretenses, using its power to betray the followers it promised to save and protect. If we consider the following, Drink this wine for it is my blood, eat this bread for it is my body, it does bear connotations of an oath of submission being taken, of centralizing power. You are because of my being and sacrifice. This is very much the narrative of power and its central role in our lives; whether you are European or African, the pervasive role of the Church still remains with us, and any dissent will not be tolerated. I am making more work that features historic religious significance such as the Last Supper. Religion continues to underpin much of our socialization, much of which can be attributed to the colonizing project if you to look at Africa, and in some cases as an ally. So there is a lot to learn, explore, and interrogate. The library reflects Chiurai’s artistic repertoire, which deploys the use of mixed media to address social, political and cultural issues. It calls to mind his groundbreaking 2011 exhibition State of the Nation which explored conflict by constructing an African utopia that enabled him to merge forms and mediums, juxtapose political ideas, evoke historical figures – like a speech by slain Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba delivered by artist Zaki Ibrahim – alongside a performance by contemporary musician Thandiswa Mazwai. External links Category: Living people Category:Artists from Zimbabwe Category:Activists from Zimbabwe Category:Social activists