_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.

Open Closed Open

‘Open closed open. Before we are born, everything is open in the universe without us. For as long as we live, everything is closed within us. And when we die, everything is open again. Open closed open. That’s all we are.’

Yehuda Amichai (1998) Translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld

Recently, three people close to me opened--or closed-- depending on how you see it. One was my brother-in-law Jim. For over fifty years, together we kept alive the memory of his brother, my late husband. The other was a friend from earlier days, someone from the nineteen sixties with whom I shared Peace Corps times in East Africa. And before them, my beloved friend Ellen died. She and I shared a house for eleven years, where I was super-aunt to her three children.

Examining the meaning of these people in my life, and constructing the meaning of their death, I am oddly--and gratefully--comforted. It's as if each of them taught me something by the way they left. They hadn't planned to do so. I wasn't central to their lives, the way their spouses and children were. But we shared conversations and thoughts over the years. And knowing them as I did, I understand a bit more about how finality can be a bit more of an opening than a closing--though still I fear it, truth be told.

My friend Diarmuid knew he was dying. He was in hospice, but we kept texting. His straightforwardness was invigorating, his ability to coexist with death's approach and still be incensed by the state of the world he was leaving behind. I loved his sense of outrage, his Swiftian anger at how messed up things are and how they need to be mended. When we were young, in the sixties, we were optimistic things would get better. Doing our bit to make that happen, he worked with farmers in Uganda and I taught secondary school in Kenya. Things felt less calamitous, before the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, before 9/11, before climate catastrophe, before the magic and destruction of social media. The world was headed in the right direction, and we were along for the ride, making progress happen.

What did I learn from Diarmuid and how he handled his exit? I learned you can remain engaged, pissed off, unrelenting in fighting injustice in the world around you.

What did I learn from Diarmuid and how he handled his exit? I learned you can remain engaged, pissed off, unrelenting in fighting injustice in the world around you. And in the end, as you skip away from it all, you can observe that your individual life is connected to larger realities. As Diarmuid said in his last unfinished note to me, not with grandiosity but with inquiry:

Is it a coincidence that the helpless thrashing of the last cohort of defunct empires matches my personal struggle to maintain coherence? In my case, I am leaving the stage of history with an overwhelming feeling of joy and gratitude for the love I have been able to give and receive. Vladimir the Terrible, Donald the cultural rag-picker and Boris the Blithering Idiot should be so lucky.

Upon further reflection, I don’t think this balmy notion plays out into anything resembling an insight. But it is definitely a fact that my exit and the final collapse of Imperialism (currently in a demented state but still sowing havoc) are somehow coinciding.

On the other hand, my brother Jim did not know his death was on its way. It came quickly. He was away in five days. Jim, too, had a finely honed sense of outrage. He and I were on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but each of us was unrelenting in how we interpreted the world's woes. Underneath his opinionated, take-no-prisoners intellect, shone a vulnerability and lovingkindness.

As he wrote a few months before his death,

{thanks for your card re} my aging, my crappy health and just plain reminder of our ties. It's our ties that matter most of course.

Jim taught me that anger doesn't have to dissolve bonds, that sharpness of mind needn't fade over time, that there are ways of being loving even when inner conflicts threaten to choke off kindness.

Jim taught me that anger doesn't have to dissolve bonds, that sharpness of mind needn't fade over time, that there are ways of being loving even when inner conflicts threaten to choke off kindness.

My dear Ellen showed me graciousness in the face of leavetaking, courage at its most fiery in resisting despair. Our last conversations reverberate over time. Anticipating her imminent death two years ago at what is now the not very old age of sixty-nine, Ellen wrote:

I don't really know what to think about the afterlife. Whatever it is, it will be an annihilation of anything I’ve already experienced. Will my consciousness and being disappear? Probably. At least as I understand consciousness and being. That's scary, but also it raises my curiosity, because the change does not necessarily mean an ending, just a different state that might as well be an ending. I guess that's the point of "soul growth" -- to facilitate the transition.

I'm in a different space, already "going away" and yet I'm alive and doing relatively well. I don't want to anticipate my death. I want to value what I have. It reminds me of the scene in the play "Our Town" when the woman dies in childbirth and comes back to visit her family. She sees everything so poignantly, while her family is just involved in the banalities of everyday living. I expect things will be changing as I go along; I will feel different things, going back and forth between anger, fighting, acceptance, sadness and joy in what I have.

For now I still have some work I want to do. One can only stay on these subjects for so long. Thank God, there is living to do.

Living to do; fortunately, yes for now. Those who have left are my teachers, guiding me and urging me to be open to what is to come. Goodbye Jim, Ellen, Diarmuid. Thank you.

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