THE growing body of contemporary Zimbabwean artists is now making a great impact on regional and international art circuits.
Eight years ago, the Johannesburg Art Fair debuted in Johannesburg, South Africa, the first of its kind on the African continent.
The objectives were to bring contemporary art to a broader section of the market, including indigenous entrepreneurs and to address the price gap between Western artists and living African artists.
In 2008, I was invited to its premier as an art critic from Zimbabwe, which ran from March 13 to 16.
Among the prestigious galleries participating included the Goodman Gallery, Everard Read Gallery, David Krut, Warren Siebrits, Rooke-gallery, Joao Ferreira Gallery, Michael Stevenson, SMAC, Whatiftheworld, Bell Roberts, Perry Rubenstein and October Gallery of London, UK. 
The debuting 2008 Johannesburg Art Fair was sponsored by First National Bank (FNB) of South Africa.
It represented the single largest collection and sale of contemporary art thus far from Africa.
Amid the bustling excitement generated by the press, art connoisseurs and academia as being the first metropolitan Visual Art Fair in Southern Africa, my main criticism was the fair served the tastes of an international clientele at the expense of the indigenous Southern African voice.
Unfortunately, Zimbabwe was not represented.
The fair included an exhibition for independent African artists not represented by galleries, which was curated by West African curator Simon Njami.
Njami had previously acted as chief curator of the Africa Remix Exhibition and for the Africa Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale.
The recently held FNB Joburg Art Fair, 2016, at the Sandton Convention Centre, this time around included Zimbabwean artists.
It was an opportunity for them to offer an insight into the varied facets of Zimbabwe’s socio-cultural milieu and our artistic faculty.
The representation of Zimbabwe’s selected artists has a national and practical significance in that it provides an outlet for analysis and discourse on Zimbabwean art and culture outside of our borders.
Zimbabwean artist, Chikonzero Chazunguza’s work featured at the 2016 Johannesburg Art Fair, portrays an analytical approach to the gestures of the human figure.
He draws on social-political historical narrative to create imagery which has an understated revolutionary resonance, yet is a poignant expression of the African reality.
Chazunguza brings historical colonial memory alive in the present context, where he reclaims the lost pride of the First Chimurenga with the shoe on the other foot, by re-imagining the famous documentary political photograph of Kaguvi and Nehanda handcuffed as the captives during the First Chimurenga as heroes and the colonial authorities as the guilty perpetrators of land and livestock pilferage.
Accompanying series of photographs with equal parts staged and manipulated with graphics and documentary footage, Chazunguza’s work represents a critique of Africa’s place in a global political arena in a digital age and visually rectifies the injustices of colonial history that we have inadvertently inherited.
His artistic project engages with the discourse of indigenous African rights and addresses the wrongs perpetuated on Africans and the colonial denial of the legal and political status of the African.
His visually codified images of African colonisers are caricatures of settler Europeans with the characteristic condescending gesture of self-satisfied folded arms of authority.
From colonial times, the visual images of Africa have determined the world’s perception of us.
It is time that we reclaim and project our own perception of self.
Chazunguza is an established contemporary multi-media artist, best known for his graphics, prints, narrative-less performances, video installations and photography.
He was selected to represent Zimbabwe at the 2016 Johannesburg Art Fair.
Chazunguza was born on January 13 1967 and raised in Harare, Zimbabwe.
He won a scholarship to study at the Institute of Pictorial Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria, where he earned his qualifications in Fine Art in 1987.
He trained in the classical modes of printmaking, drawing and painting.
During his seven years in Bulgaria, he witnessed the Eastern European country going through major socio-political transformations.
Simultaneously with the 2016 Johannesburg Art Fair, artworks examining the African socio-urban environment of Zimbabwe as the main source of inspiration for Bikita-born Gareth Nyandoro and Highfield-born Masimba Hwati were selected to feature at SMAC Art Gallery, in South Africa, where they caused a stir and assisted in re-establishing Zimbabwe’s reputation as a Nation of conceptually astute artists.
The works of the two artists are a critique of the individual artists’ experiences in the rural, urban and peri-urban confines of Zimbabwe in an historical, social and economic context.
Visual puns, deadpan humour and witty satire characterise their socio-cultural works.
The combined media of video art, print-making and installation give the works a post-modernist essence.
Sophisticated imagery, refined technical proficiency and conceptual perspicacity, layered with bold post-colonial African-centred content exemplifies their works.
Trained in Rijks Akademie van Beeldende Kunsten, in the Netherlands, Nyandoro’s meticulous accuracy and observation of society, technology and the rural-urban disconnect in Zimbabwe, coupled with Hwati’s mixed media assemblages of Zimbabwean material culture, re-configured in new post-modern conflations.
Hwati, born in 1982, grew up and attended school in Highfield, completing his formal education in Mhondoro.
He undertook a visual arts course at the Harare Polytechnic where he majored in ceramics and painting.
His works feature historical and contemporary themes experimenting with symbolism and perceptions associated with cultural objects.
Zimbabwean artists’ exhibitions in South Africa clearly illustrate the diplomatic significance of visual art for regional integration and the bridging of race relations, cultures and histories.
Art, material culture and cultures of indigenous civilisations are fragile commodities of our humanities and heritage.
They can quickly disappear if they are not cherished, preserved and appreciated by nations.
Zimbabwe needs to create and harness the right curatorial conditions, expertise, talent and scholarship to enable these artistic achievements to be accelerated and sustained.
The revival of our artistic legacy through international exposure and training of visual artists through the intervention of the new proposed Zimbabwean educational curriculum are long overdue.
World over, history has repeatedly demonstrated that the growth and development of significant art is a result of sustained national, cultural patriotism and commercial patronage.
Unlike Zimbabweans, South African business conglomerates and other economic bodies have, since their independence, invested seriously in the arts.
Today, Johannesburg’s Art Fair has become Southern Africa’s most comprehensive collection of the finest art works and collectables in the region and overseas.
Beyond the ‘object’, the fair has become a facility and platform for regional socio-cultural discourse.
The fair provided a space for leading artists, galleries, collectors, writers, thinkers and art patrons to intermingle.
The work of Zimbabwean artists elicited congratulatory commentaries from South African and international audiences attending the exhibition.
The trio’s foray in South Africa has brought positive recognition for Zimbabwe’s art and culture.
Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD in Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA (Doctorate in Business Administration) and Post-Colonial Heritage Studies. He is a writer, lecturer, musician, art critic, practising artist and corporate image consultant. He is is also a specialist art consultant, post-colonial scholar, Zimbabwean socio-economic analyst and researcher.
For views and email: tonym.monda@gmail.com