Chiurai exhibition comes to the gallery
THE National Gallery of Zimbabwe, home of the most comprehensive collection of Zimbabwean art, will host a solo exhibition, entitled We Need New Names by Kudzanai Chiurai next month.
An internationally-acclaimed young artist, Chiurai was the first black student to graduate with a BA Fine Art from Pretoria University in South Africa. His early work mainly centred on political, economic and social strife in his fatherland, Zimbabwe. In his vindictive, multimedia creation, Chiurai tackles the most pertinent issues facing the current generation of Southern Africans, which include civil war, xenophobia, institutional corruption and deracination.
Currently Chiurai has 74 works and a Solo Retrospective showing at the recently opened Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa’s (Zeitz MOCAA).
In yesteryears Chiurai has held several solo exhibitions such as Dying to be men in 2009, State of the Nation in 2011 and Harvest Thorns in 2013 and the latest exhibition We live in Silence at Goodman Gallery in South Africa. Chiurai has participated in major exhibitions at institutions such as SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, USA, Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, and Victoria and Albert Museum in London. His work has been acquired by MoMA, Pigozzi Collection, Walther Collection, Foundation Louis Vuitton, Zeitz MoCAA and Iziko SANG. In 2013, his film Iyeza was one of the few African films to be included in the New Frontier shorts programme at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2012, Chiurai’s Conflict Resolution series was included in a document in Kassel and he was awarded the FNB Artist of the Year Prize.
In the same line of thinking his solo exhibition titled We Live in Silence at Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg considers thematic concerns of post colonialism and colonial futures; Chiurai poses the question “What next?”
The title of this exhibition refers to No Violet Bulawayo’s debut novel which offers an exploration of Christian values and traditional intersection, patriarchal structures and gender roles; memories of home before Zimbabwe’s independence, during the period of stability followed by the time “of things falling apart”, and the fractured identity that comes with assimilation of Western cultures. Moreso, the exhibition is curated by Candice Allison includes recent and previously unseen work: photographic prints, drawings, oil paintings, video and instillation; alongside paintings from the National Gallery of Zimbabwe’s permanent collection, material from the National Archives and Chiurai’s own personal archive of propaganda posters and vinyl records.
We need new names traces Zimbabwe’s social and political changes. It references a myriad of ideological influences that informed the Liberation Movement from the seeds of Pan Africanism, the American Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, Nationalism and Communism. Internal conflict in Zimbabwe’s liberation camps and negotiations all found a voice in music and pirate radio stations that broadcast these audios recordings. It also expressed the changes that were taking place, introduced new names leading to the struggle and celebrated those who had lost their lives. Chiurai brings into light the importance of music in Zimbabwe’s independence struggle, as a crucial avenue for resistance and communication.
The exhibition is set to open on November 11, 2017 at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe.