Art of Zimbabwe
Encyclopedia
Zimbabwean art
includes decorative esthetics applied to many aspects of life, including art objects as such, utilitarian objects, objects used in religion, warfare, in propaganda
, and in many other spheres. Within this broad arena, Zimbabwe
has several identifiable categories of art. It is a hallmark of African cultures in general that art touches many aspects of life, and most tribes have a vigorous and often recognisable canon of styles and a great range of art-worked objects. These can include mask
s, drum
s, textile
decoration, beadwork, carving, sculpture
, ceramic
in various forms, housing and the person themselves. Decoration of the body in permanent ways such as scarification
or tattoo
or impermanently as in painting the body for a ceremony is a common feature of African cultures.
Spoken or musical art is also a prominent part of African cultures generally. Various instruments including drums, lamellophones and stringed bows have been used in Zimbabwe, while oratory, poetry, fable telling, praise singing and tribal ritual chants are also prominent.
It is useful to examine Zimbabwean art through time, by area, by main tribal division and as indicative of recent historic and political changes.
or San, Hottentot or Bushmen people, who were hunter gatherers. They often lived in caves and made various artworks, including beading from shells for personal decoration, incising designs on ostrich
shells and utilitarian objects such as clay water straws and also on the cave walls themselves. These dynamic and varied cave paintings date from around 10000 BCE and depict humans hunting many kinds of animals, warfare between humans, mystical and other unidentified marks, landscape and ceremonies where the humans are obviously decorated or in costume. The colours vary from black through brown, red, ochre
, yellow and white. The pigments used are unknown, though presumably contain a mix of local materials such as earth oxides, fat, vegetable juices and possibly fluids from larva
l insects. Certainly they have lasted for thousands of years.
Their descendants, who live mainly in Botswana and Namibia, sing a variety of uniquely structured and tuneful songs, accompanied sometimes by a plucked or struck bow. They also have a repertoire of dances, and there is no reason to suspect their ancestors did not do the same thing.
These Stone Age people were supplanted by Iron Age Nguni
-derived pastoral and farming peoples migrating in from the east and north around 2000 years ago, who became the ancestors of the WaRozwi
/Barotse people and by derivation the Amashona peoples. The art of these people can be seen in many decorated first-fired clay pots, where typically a repeated dhlo-dhlo (linear herringbone
) motif or similar edging was applied. Other artwork is harder to source, though it can assumed they decorated the body and had beadwork
and other art styles related to typical styles of the East and Central African Nguni peoples. A recurrent motif in Shona art is the transformation of a human into an animal of some kind.
At around the same time as the earlier incursions of these Bantu-type people (200BCE) there were sporadic expeditions by South-East coastal dwellers, probably by the Savi/Save river or over the Inyanga/Chimanimani mountain passes, into the Zimbabwe area to obtain gold
for trade with Arab
traders trading as far south as the mouth of the Savi. They built stone forts extending into the interior at one day's march from each other, with the final one being the complex now known as Great Zimbabwe
. To service the coastal trade a town called Sofala
was established at the mouth of the Sofala river on the east coast. It had its heydey in around 700 AD/CE and served the Mwenemutapa/Monomotapa Kingdom, whose capital was Great Zimbabwe
. Arabs took up residence in Sofala around 900AD/CE.
Archaeology at Zimbabwe has shown several distinct phases of building and styles of stonework. It is likely the original complex was rather functional - essentially a fort and trading post only, and the later and more elaborate building occurred when the complex became the central administrative and royal centre of activity for the area. Some of the architectural features are probably linked with styles of coastal Swahili architecture
and some are uniquely local. Chinese pottery shards, ivory, glass objects, local gold objects, Arabic and local beads, copper ingots, iron
ingots and other trade items have been found at Zimbabwe. The herringbone and other stepped linear froms of decoration in the walls are a feature of the most recent stonework. Similar stonework is seen at Khami
ruins, a fort built on the way to Zimbabwe. However, the most impressive and unique feature of Zimbabwe are the huge soapstone birds, the so-called Zimbabwe bird
s, depicting a bird of prey
perched on a zig-zag base motif. These birds are possibly based on the Bateleur eagle or maybe a vulture
species and might have had something to do with a religious cult or indicative of a totem
animal for the ruling people at the time. Most of these sculptures are still in the country but one is in South Africa where it still adorns Groote Schuur
an official residence, once the home of Cecil Rhodes. Another unexplained motif at Zimbabwe, which like the birds were mounted on the perimeter wall of the Great Enclosure, were stelae or tall narrow rectilinear pillars of rock (probably natural fracture artefacts) set at intervals round the top of the wall. The Zimbabwe bird is the most prominent motif of the current Zimbabwe flag.
es' or fur blankets influenced by BaTchwana styles from Botswana to the south.
In the 1940s a Zimbabwe philanthropist named Jairos Jiri
began to teach disabled people various artistic skills and centralised their production for sale in several outlets nation-wide. These proved very popular and returned money to persons otherwise excluded from normal commercial activity. Jairos Jiri centres remain an important part of the artistic output in Zimbabwe. Typical items include tiles, tiled tables and wall plaques, basketwork, beading, carvings in wood and stone, jewellery and paintings.
In the mid-1970s the nationalist guerilla incursions resulted in several atrocities against people in rural villages, including the sawing off of the upper lip of those perceived as collaborating with the government forces. The white government collated photographic images and a text list of these events into a propaganda booklet called 'Anatomy of Terror'. This was designed to show the brutality of the nationalists against innocent rural native people. Images from this publication are today to be found on YouTube
(for example under 'Terrorists in the Rhodesian bush').
Other art from the white minority during the civil "Rhodesian Bush" (1968 - 1979) war consisted mainly of depictions of indigenous fauna and flora and landscapes. These subjects had always been popular and remain popular to this day among white artists. No individual white artist expressed any significant political sentiment during the civil war era. However, many film, still and sound clips celebrating the government forces' role during this time are currently available on YouTube.
Chapungu Sculpture Park
in Harare
is currently an important locality for display of (mainly) Shona sculptors and carvers. Another Chapungu Sculpture Park was created in 2007 in the United States, along with a gallery, in Loveland, Colorado. Since antiquity local artists have been using the steatite/soapstone
deposits of the eastern Zimbabwe mountain ranges to produce artworks showing, among other things, the common Shona theme of animal/human inter-morphosis. These works became much larger under the patronage of white collectors in the 1960s (though the Zimbabwe birds of antiquity are massive) and now it is common to see monumental soapstone sculptures both nationally and internationally.
Noted Zimbabwean artists include sculptor Patrick Mavros, and painters Kim Donaldson
, Larry Norton, Brennan Seward, Kefas Gimo, Eric Forlee and Owen Maseko
.
, covering particularly the sculpture produced in Zimbabwe. The Discussion page suggests that these two articles could be merged.
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
includes decorative esthetics applied to many aspects of life, including art objects as such, utilitarian objects, objects used in religion, warfare, in propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
, and in many other spheres. Within this broad arena, Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...
has several identifiable categories of art. It is a hallmark of African cultures in general that art touches many aspects of life, and most tribes have a vigorous and often recognisable canon of styles and a great range of art-worked objects. These can include mask
Mask
A mask is an article normally worn on the face, typically for protection, disguise, performance or entertainment. Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and practical purposes...
s, drum
Drum
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...
s, textile
Textile
A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...
decoration, beadwork, carving, sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
, ceramic
Ceramic
A ceramic is an inorganic, nonmetallic solid prepared by the action of heat and subsequent cooling. Ceramic materials may have a crystalline or partly crystalline structure, or may be amorphous...
in various forms, housing and the person themselves. Decoration of the body in permanent ways such as scarification
Scarification
Scarifying involves scratching, etching, burning, or superficially cutting designs, pictures, or words into the skin as a permanent body modification.In the process of body scarification, scars are formed by cutting or branding the skin...
or tattoo
Tattoo
A tattoo is made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. Tattoos on humans are a type of body modification, and tattoos on other animals are most commonly used for identification purposes...
or impermanently as in painting the body for a ceremony is a common feature of African cultures.
Spoken or musical art is also a prominent part of African cultures generally. Various instruments including drums, lamellophones and stringed bows have been used in Zimbabwe, while oratory, poetry, fable telling, praise singing and tribal ritual chants are also prominent.
It is useful to examine Zimbabwean art through time, by area, by main tribal division and as indicative of recent historic and political changes.
Prehistory and Pre-colonial history
In prehistory the area was widely settled by Kung peoples, the so-called KhoikhoiKhoikhoi
The Khoikhoi or Khoi, in standardised Khoekhoe/Nama orthography spelled Khoekhoe, are a historical division of the Khoisan ethnic group, the native people of southwestern Africa, closely related to the Bushmen . They had lived in southern Africa since the 5th century AD...
or San, Hottentot or Bushmen people, who were hunter gatherers. They often lived in caves and made various artworks, including beading from shells for personal decoration, incising designs on ostrich
Ostrich
The Ostrich is one or two species of large flightless birds native to Africa, the only living member of the genus Struthio. Some analyses indicate that the Somali Ostrich may be better considered a full species apart from the Common Ostrich, but most taxonomists consider it to be a...
shells and utilitarian objects such as clay water straws and also on the cave walls themselves. These dynamic and varied cave paintings date from around 10000 BCE and depict humans hunting many kinds of animals, warfare between humans, mystical and other unidentified marks, landscape and ceremonies where the humans are obviously decorated or in costume. The colours vary from black through brown, red, ochre
Ochre
Ochre is the term for both a golden-yellow or light yellow brown color and for a form of earth pigment which produces the color. The pigment can also be used to create a reddish tint known as "red ochre". The more rarely used terms "purple ochre" and "brown ochre" also exist for variant hues...
, yellow and white. The pigments used are unknown, though presumably contain a mix of local materials such as earth oxides, fat, vegetable juices and possibly fluids from larva
Larva
A larva is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle...
l insects. Certainly they have lasted for thousands of years.
Their descendants, who live mainly in Botswana and Namibia, sing a variety of uniquely structured and tuneful songs, accompanied sometimes by a plucked or struck bow. They also have a repertoire of dances, and there is no reason to suspect their ancestors did not do the same thing.
These Stone Age people were supplanted by Iron Age Nguni
Nguni people
-History:The ancient history of the Nguni people is wrapped up in their oral history. According to legend they were a people who migrated from Egypt to the Great Lakes region of sub-equatorial Central/East Africa...
-derived pastoral and farming peoples migrating in from the east and north around 2000 years ago, who became the ancestors of the WaRozwi
WaRozwi
The WaRozwi or Rozwi people of ancient Zimbabwe are probably those that built the Great Zimbabwe ruins, probably to service gold and other trading brought in via the Save river from the coastal Arab/Swahili town of Sofala. They are widely believed to be descendents of the Mapungubwe culture...
/Barotse people and by derivation the Amashona peoples. The art of these people can be seen in many decorated first-fired clay pots, where typically a repeated dhlo-dhlo (linear herringbone
Herringbone
Herringbone can refer to:*A layout of airline seating – see Herringbone seating*A bonding pattern of brickwork, also known as opus spicatum*A weaving pattern of tweed or twill cloth – see Herringbone *A cross-stitch pattern...
) motif or similar edging was applied. Other artwork is harder to source, though it can assumed they decorated the body and had beadwork
Beadwork
Beadwork is the art or craft of attaching beads to one another or to cloth, usually by the use of a needle and thread or soft, flexible wire. Most beadwork takes the form of jewelry or other personal adornment, but beads are also used in wall hangings and sculpture.Beadwork techniques are broadly...
and other art styles related to typical styles of the East and Central African Nguni peoples. A recurrent motif in Shona art is the transformation of a human into an animal of some kind.
At around the same time as the earlier incursions of these Bantu-type people (200BCE) there were sporadic expeditions by South-East coastal dwellers, probably by the Savi/Save river or over the Inyanga/Chimanimani mountain passes, into the Zimbabwe area to obtain gold
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
for trade with Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
traders trading as far south as the mouth of the Savi. They built stone forts extending into the interior at one day's march from each other, with the final one being the complex now known as Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe is a ruined city that was once the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, which existed from 1100 to 1450 C.E. during the country’s Late Iron Age. The monument, which first began to be constructed in the 11th century and which continued to be built until the 14th century, spanned an...
. To service the coastal trade a town called Sofala
Sofala
Sofala, at present known as Nova Sofala, used to be the chief seaport of the Monomotapa Kingdom, whose capital was at Mount Fura. It is located on the Sofala Bank in Sofala Province of Mozambique.-History:...
was established at the mouth of the Sofala river on the east coast. It had its heydey in around 700 AD/CE and served the Mwenemutapa/Monomotapa Kingdom, whose capital was Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe is a ruined city that was once the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, which existed from 1100 to 1450 C.E. during the country’s Late Iron Age. The monument, which first began to be constructed in the 11th century and which continued to be built until the 14th century, spanned an...
. Arabs took up residence in Sofala around 900AD/CE.
Archaeology at Zimbabwe has shown several distinct phases of building and styles of stonework. It is likely the original complex was rather functional - essentially a fort and trading post only, and the later and more elaborate building occurred when the complex became the central administrative and royal centre of activity for the area. Some of the architectural features are probably linked with styles of coastal Swahili architecture
Swahili architecture
Swahili architecture is a style of building along the eastern and southeastern coasts of Africa. Though essentially of Arabic or Persian style and origin; archaeological, written, linguistic, and cultural evidence also suggests strong African influence and sustainment. There is evidence of enduring...
and some are uniquely local. Chinese pottery shards, ivory, glass objects, local gold objects, Arabic and local beads, copper ingots, iron
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...
ingots and other trade items have been found at Zimbabwe. The herringbone and other stepped linear froms of decoration in the walls are a feature of the most recent stonework. Similar stonework is seen at Khami
Khami
Khami is a ruined city located in what is now Zimbabwe. It was once the capital of the Kingdom of Butua of the Torwa dynasty. It is located 22 kilometers west of the modern city of Bulawayo, capital of the province of Matabeleland North. Its ruins are now a national monument in Zimbabwe. Khami is...
ruins, a fort built on the way to Zimbabwe. However, the most impressive and unique feature of Zimbabwe are the huge soapstone birds, the so-called Zimbabwe bird
Zimbabwe Bird
The stone-carved Zimbabwe Bird is a national emblem of Zimbabwe, appearing on the national flags and coats of arms of both Zimbabwe and Rhodesia, as well as on banknotes and coins...
s, depicting a bird of prey
Bird of prey
Birds of prey are birds that hunt for food primarily on the wing, using their keen senses, especially vision. They are defined as birds that primarily hunt vertebrates, including other birds. Their talons and beaks tend to be relatively large, powerful and adapted for tearing and/or piercing flesh....
perched on a zig-zag base motif. These birds are possibly based on the Bateleur eagle or maybe a vulture
Vulture
Vulture is the name given to two groups of convergently evolved scavenging birds, the New World Vultures including the well-known Californian and Andean Condors, and the Old World Vultures including the birds which are seen scavenging on carcasses of dead animals on African plains...
species and might have had something to do with a religious cult or indicative of a totem
Totem
A totem is a stipulated ancestor of a group of people, such as a family, clan, group, lineage, or tribe.Totems support larger groups than the individual person. In kinship and descent, if the apical ancestor of a clan is nonhuman, it is called a totem...
animal for the ruling people at the time. Most of these sculptures are still in the country but one is in South Africa where it still adorns Groote Schuur
Groote Schuur
Groote Schuur is an estate in Cape Town, South Africa.Cecil Rhodes took out a lease on the house in 1891. He later bought it in 1893, and had it converted and refurbished by the architect Sir Herbert Baker...
an official residence, once the home of Cecil Rhodes. Another unexplained motif at Zimbabwe, which like the birds were mounted on the perimeter wall of the Great Enclosure, were stelae or tall narrow rectilinear pillars of rock (probably natural fracture artefacts) set at intervals round the top of the wall. The Zimbabwe bird is the most prominent motif of the current Zimbabwe flag.
Amandebele incursions
The origin of Amandebele speaking peoples in southern Zimbabwe received its main impetus from settlement around 1840 under Mzilikazi, a Khumalo chief who rebelled against Zulu rule. However, it is likely that such tribes began crossing the Limpopo sporadically from about 1800 onwards. Amandebele conflict with the Amashona drove them northwards into what was dubbed in colonial times Mashonaland. These Amandebele/Matabele peoples had several distinct art forms differing from the Amashona: in pottery styles, bead aprons and headpieces, house decoration, carving and decoration of war implements such as clubs/knobkierries and shields.Modern Art Movements
Art in Zimbabwe lost most of its spiritual power with the conversion of the majority of the population to Christianity in the 19th and 20th centuries. Missionaries harmed the local cultures by demanding destruction of anything they regarded as anti-Christian, in particular masks or carvings thought to have votive powers, that is, to be appealing to some god that was not the Christian one. By the second world war most art objects produced in Zimbabwe were simply that: produced for tourist and local white settler consumption. With the advent of guns, animal skins prepared and decorated with small panels of other hides also began to appear more frequently in the early 20th century, as well as 'karossKaross
Bushmen's A Kaross is a cloak made of sheepskin, or the hide of other animals, with the hair left on. It is properly confined to the coat of skin without sleeves and used to be worn by the Khoikhoi and Bushmen / San peoples of South Africa. These karosses became replaced by a blanket. Their chiefs...
es' or fur blankets influenced by BaTchwana styles from Botswana to the south.
In the 1940s a Zimbabwe philanthropist named Jairos Jiri
Jairos Jiri
Jairos Jiri was born in 1921 in the Mutenyami Village in Bikita, Masvingo,close to Chitsanga Primary School. He was a philanthropist.In the early day of his childhood he had a dream of helping the disabled people...
began to teach disabled people various artistic skills and centralised their production for sale in several outlets nation-wide. These proved very popular and returned money to persons otherwise excluded from normal commercial activity. Jairos Jiri centres remain an important part of the artistic output in Zimbabwe. Typical items include tiles, tiled tables and wall plaques, basketwork, beading, carvings in wood and stone, jewellery and paintings.
In the mid-1970s the nationalist guerilla incursions resulted in several atrocities against people in rural villages, including the sawing off of the upper lip of those perceived as collaborating with the government forces. The white government collated photographic images and a text list of these events into a propaganda booklet called 'Anatomy of Terror'. This was designed to show the brutality of the nationalists against innocent rural native people. Images from this publication are today to be found on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
(for example under 'Terrorists in the Rhodesian bush').
Other art from the white minority during the civil "Rhodesian Bush" (1968 - 1979) war consisted mainly of depictions of indigenous fauna and flora and landscapes. These subjects had always been popular and remain popular to this day among white artists. No individual white artist expressed any significant political sentiment during the civil war era. However, many film, still and sound clips celebrating the government forces' role during this time are currently available on YouTube.
Chapungu Sculpture Park
Chapungu Sculpture Park
The Chapungu Sculpture Park is a sculpture park in Msasa, Harare, Zimbabwe, which displays the work of Zimbabwean stone sculptors. Its was founded in 1970 by Roy Guthrie, who was instrumental in promoting the work of its sculptors worldwide...
in Harare
Harare
Harare before 1982 known as Salisbury) is the largest city and capital of Zimbabwe. It has an estimated population of 1,600,000, with 2,800,000 in its metropolitan area . Administratively, Harare is an independent city equivalent to a province. It is Zimbabwe's largest city and its...
is currently an important locality for display of (mainly) Shona sculptors and carvers. Another Chapungu Sculpture Park was created in 2007 in the United States, along with a gallery, in Loveland, Colorado. Since antiquity local artists have been using the steatite/soapstone
Soapstone
Soapstone is a metamorphic rock, a talc-schist. It is largely composed of the mineral talc and is thus rich in magnesium. It is produced by dynamothermal metamorphism and metasomatism, which occurs in the areas where tectonic plates are subducted, changing rocks by heat and pressure, with influx...
deposits of the eastern Zimbabwe mountain ranges to produce artworks showing, among other things, the common Shona theme of animal/human inter-morphosis. These works became much larger under the patronage of white collectors in the 1960s (though the Zimbabwe birds of antiquity are massive) and now it is common to see monumental soapstone sculptures both nationally and internationally.
Noted Zimbabwean artists include sculptor Patrick Mavros, and painters Kim Donaldson
Kim Donaldson
Kim Donaldson is a Zimbabwean artist who specialises in painting the peoples and wildlife of Africa. He spent his early life on a ranch in what was Rhodesia, Donaldson was perfectly placed to develop and nurture his interest in the wildlife and people that surrounded him.Donaldson's paintings...
, Larry Norton, Brennan Seward, Kefas Gimo, Eric Forlee and Owen Maseko
Owen Maseko
Owen Maseko is a Zimbabwean visual artist and installation artist, described as "one of Zimbabwe's most prominent artists"....
.
See also
Shona artShona art
Shona art is the name applied to the visual culture of Zimbabwe. The term is used despite the fact that many artists now working there are not ethnically Shona and logically it should include art produced by settlers or visitors to Zimbabwe, especially in the colonial period...
, covering particularly the sculpture produced in Zimbabwe. The Discussion page suggests that these two articles could be merged.
- :Category:Zimbabwean sculptors