By DR. Tony Monda

ONE of Zimbabwes’ most talented, but unsung environmental artists is one Alberto Wachi, who began sculpting at the age of 10. Alberto Wachi, now (38) was trained at Utonga Art Studios in Tafara, Mabvuku in the late 1980’s, and has since developed a distinct signature style of his own.
What makes this artist unique, are his innovative, mixed-media sculptures in stone and wood that are designed and presented as suspended stabiles.
His visual facility with wood, wire and stone which are his prime media of expression has made him one of the most original and sought-after mid-career Zimbabwean artists of his generation.
The adept multi-media sculptor explores disquieting relationships between abstraction and reality.
His radical simplification, concentration of form and profound feeling for the qualities of his materials sets him apart from his contemporaries.
His art attempts an abstract synthesis between natural organic and geometric forms.
The ‘shape conscious’ sculptor began combining the medium of serpentine stones with wood, metal and other materials to expand and explore new indigenous aesthetic languages and re-invent new anatomies.
Alberto Wachi’s works are comprised of a linear biomorphism, with ridged tubular forms and references to the human anatomy conceived and suspended in the vertical.
He creates visual poetic references to organic growth, and movement suggestive of nature and organic processes.
There are echoes of Arp, and Brancusi’s style reduced to an almost essential Afro-centric mystical purity.
Plants become human limbs, snakes become tree roots and bow and arrows become harps and zithers.
As a visualiser Wachi analyses and draws on a bi-associative vision to create his witty anatomical re-compositions of human, and plant forms.
He uses visual puns of shape to articulate his vision.
A re-arrangement and play on feet, limbs and heads, reconstructed to resemble plant and re-imagined amoebic forms characterise his works of Art.
He displays a knack for envisioning and harmonising bi-associative shapes in human and plant forms that strikingly distinguish his work.
He brings together the disparate mediums of stone, rope, wood and tropical seed in a harmonising whole.
The most characteristic feature of his art emerged in the early 1990s.
Comparatively, his carvings in wood and stone have elements of surrealism, particularly the biomorphic imagery which calls to mind the works of Jan Hans Arp (1887 – 1966), and associations with the Abstraction-Création and Miro.
Wachi’s work is purely organic with abstract leanings.
His abstract forms are suggestive of plants and humans.
His sculptures ambiguously evoke human anatomy, stones, fruit, serpents and amphibians, which for him distills the organic essence of life.
The pods become female torsos or distended ovaries; they become extensions of his work processes and have a being of their own.
Regardless of the fact that the artist conceives and works in an African context, his works embody a recognisable universal aesthetic which allows multiracial viewers to access his imagery.
His work has an elongated, sinuous line of Jugenstil, Art Nouveau and Stile Liberty as it is referred to in Italy; a style characterised by linearity and an asymmetry of long flowing organic structures.
Wachi perceives of his artworks as’ real objects’ rather than symbolic or metaphorical objects.
His sculpting methods draw attention to the material and to external forces relating to it such as gravity, elevation and movement.
He often uses natural vegetal dyes and soils to stain his woods as close to the natural as possible.
Born in Harare in March 1975, Alberto Wachi is proficient as both, a wood and stone sculptor.
Wachi expressed an interest in art at a very early age.
He began drawing of his own volition while still in junior school and excelled in craft work of every medium presented to him as a young boy at Tsinhirano Primary School in Tafara and later on at Mabvuku High School 2.
He first exhibited his work at a local gallery in 1989, at the age of 14.
At the age of seventeen in 1992 and 1993, he received a ‘Highly Commended Certificate’ and ‘Award of Merit’ for sculptures respectively, from the National Gallery of Zimbabwe.
In 2002 he was awarded first prize for ‘Young Sculptors Certificate of Excellence’ and in 2010 he won the first ‘Certificate of Excellence’ at the Kristin Diehl International Young Sculptors’ Exhibition Competition which toured Germany.
At 26 Wachi also undertook a joint commissioned mural at NASSA, Stanbic Bank Building, on Second Street together with senior veteran artists Arthur Azevedo and Helen Lieros in 2001.
The mural is one of the few collaborative Zimbabwean pieces created by three distinguished artists.
He is now an internationally recognised artist, in his own right with over 45 group exhibitions to his credit.
Wachi who is an environmentally conscious artist says,
“I am inspired by trees and the shape of their branches. It is the natural curvature and shape of the branches that directs my inspiration. It is not necessary for one to cut down whole trees for carving –never do I cut a tree-only one curved branch off a single tree is sufficient for my work. It is a covenant I have made with nature.
My work is also inspired by an old ancestral calling. I come from a long lineage of craftsmen and indigenous weapon makers, citing Cross-bows, (Huta ne Miseve), bows and arrows, walking sticks , sling – putts and knobkerries as some of the weapons made by his grandfathers”.
The themes of his famous signature works include: ‘Snakes of the Earth’, ‘A song of Freedom’, ‘Guitar Woman’, and his numerous images of seeds, plant growth, indigenous weaponry, and the dualism of life and philosophy.
He has works in private collections in Zimbabwe, South Africa, UK, France, Germany, Venice Italy, California, New York, Washington and North Carolina.

Dr. Tony Monda holds a PhD. in Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA (Doctorate of Business Administration) in Post-Colonial Heritage Studies. He is a writer, musician, art critic, practicing artist and Corporate Image Consultant.