ARTS FOCUS NEWSDAY
Visual artist and poet Mthabisi Phili has come up with an interesting visual arts compilation titled Wall of Peace as part of the Perception 360 exhibition that has seen community members making contributions to artwork.
Phili told NewsDay that he came up with the concept to give people from all walks of life a chance to show their artistic creativity.
“The idea is to have people putting up their own definition of peace on the installation and share it with others. I am still taking more people to take part,” said Phili.
Already, there are messages on the wall that were posted from countries such as Nigeria, France, Denmark, Japan, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.
He said the novel concept seeks to involve members of the public in visual art.
“Art is no longer about the artists only, but should now transcend those barriers and involve the public as well. People should be part of the exhibition as well as the installation,” said the former teacher who now doubles up as arts curator.
His works are in private and public collections in countries such as Austria, Britain, Norway, Germany and South Africa.
Another artist who made a contribution to the peace theme, Virginia Chihota, said in an interview with NewsDay that her works reflect the fact that “she has not seen or found any peace in the country”.
In all her works, Chihota says peace is elusive and she would only stop complaining about the absence of peace when she notes significant improvements in society.
With Raisedon Baya 2010 june
BLUE PENCIL: A DOCUMENTARY OF OUR PAST AND PRESENT
The only way to describe the vastly talented Mthabisi Phili is to call him a social commentator. His critical and almost microscopic eye has every aspect of our society under observation. This view crystallized in my mind I meandered around the Marshal Barons gallery at the National Art Gallery in Bulawayo where Phili’s one month long exhibition entitled Blue Pencil - Voices in Colour is being held. In the art works that hang on the wall one sees not Mthabisi Phili the visual artiste but a deeper and more incisive social critic and visual poet. From one image to another Mthabisi leaves the viewer wondering, and going on a puzzle solving journey to pin down the meaning of his experimental pieces. Here is an artiste whose focus is not on the beauty created by his hand, paint and brush or the chisel he uses but more concerned in creating multiple meanings for his viewers.
One thing is very clear from the first offering of the exhibition. The artiste has no time to gloss over our situation. Although he has given himself the unenviable task of documenting our past and present Mthabisi Phili takes no time in presenting us with the “ugly truth.” The first piece, just as you enter the gallery, is a scathing attack on the service delivery system in our country. The ugly corner where rubbish, obviously left uncollected for months, screams for attention hits the viewer face first. The image, mostly installation, grabs one by the nose, threatening to drown and suffocate one in its nauseating stench of rotting and uncollected garbage. This is a site one can easily come across anywhere in the townships. It is a true representation of the failure of the service delivery system in Zimbabwe and the eye of the artiste telling it as it is.
With one’s thoughts and sense of smell still reeling in agony from the first piece Mthabisi Phili innocently and cruelly takes us back to the dreaded days of Murambatsvina. How do the two images connect? And yes they do connect. Loosely translated Murambatsvina means “intolerance to dirty and rubbish.” There was a time when the powers that be saw shacks in the townships as dirty and rubbish and went about cleaning the townships. This is a period many of us remember. This is the period when many poor people lost their properties and belongings and many were left homeless. In his piece of the same name Phili shows us roughly drawn sketches of people running away from graders busy pulling down shacks. The piece shows no emotions - it is not Phili’s pre-occupation to show emotions and feelings - but a poetic image of what is taking place and the brutality of the exercise. In the piece you see people running all over the place - heading nowhere - their only desire being to get as far away from the ruthless graders as possible.
Described by the Director of the Gallery as imaginative, self taught and daring Phili lives up to this description. In Broadcasting Habakkuk media freedom and polarity in the sector is tackled without reservation. Issues related to the media have been on many people’s thoughts and lips. In Matabeleland there are organizations such as Radio Dialogue that have been on the forefront of calling for the freeing of airwaves. Here Mthabisi adds his voice in calling for more players in the media. Perhaps his frustration in the current media situation is aptly summarized by another piece entitled No-content where nothing interesting save for a lone figure facing the camera and invoking nothing from the audience can be seen. Obviously the artiste is questioning the content of our one and only television station. Some people have actually described it as station of talking heads. In a subtle way Mthabisi could be wishing a change to this content; a change that could only be brought by the introduction of more players into the sector.
Among the collection is the thought provoking Symbols and Meanings. Here the artiste at his best as a social and political commentator. He questions the wisdom of certain symbols used by our political parties. A fist and an open palm and how these affect the thinking of children who have always associated the fist and an open palm with violence. A fist for a hard blow an open palm for a whack on the face! What are the values and connotations that the symbols embody? He silently asks.
There is also the satirical Looking East-but seriously. This is obviously a dig at the look east policy, especially at a time when our economy is being driven by the west. We are even using the US dollar as our main currency at the moment. I found this piece full of humour, irony and in it the strokes of a master satirist. One cannot help but laugh at the ideas the artiste is putting across. The piece, besides making one laugh, leaves one with a lot of questions in his/her head.
There is also the aptly titled Bourgeoisie and Proletariat which depicts the widening gap between the rich and the poor. The rich can be seen with space, infrastructure, some possessions and the poor have nothing except empty space. They can be seen together, crowded and looking lost. With one picture Phili is able to tell a story even a thousand words would not adequately tell. Working mainly with oils on engraved and stippled aluminum that Phili says is almost equivalent to mixed media the artiste goes out of his way to give viewers what he calls “a sensational experience of conversative subtle - loud art.”
Here is an artiste for the future.
