Moulding a nation through exhibition
THE discipline of ceramics is the base of every society on the planet, earthenware pottery served as the main means of implementation that bases dating and culmination of civilisation. Of note, several sites in Southern Africa such as Leopard’s Kopje and Zhizo are sites of the earliest occupation by humans, most ethnographic information being based on pottery finds.
The stylistic features of this ceramic ware often served in setting the tribal and chronological facets of the occupants of these areas, summarily providing a rich prelude to the story of civilisation in the region.
“Moulding a Nation” aims to bring new insights into what life was like for the people whose history is represented by the ceramics in the Gallery’s collection through further study, helping us to learn about where the inhabitants came from, what food they cooked and ate, their health, and the craft activities that took place in their houses.
This is a chance to also explore what is possible within the medium of clay.
The project will explore the utilitarian as well as the purely formal expression of artists in ceramics; the cultural and social implications of the ceramics that have been collected by the National Gallery of Zimbabwe.
“Moulding a Nation” adopts several elementary approaches such as establishing the medium of ceramics and its interspersion with metaphor; the embodiment of the ceramic object and its implied representations away from the obvious utility, the lived landscape as prevalent from the generational sequence and evolutionary reality of utility, and the aesthetic of containment as connected to all the former elements.
Co-curator of the exhibition Fadzai Muchemwa stated: “The exhibition is being held to explore the possibilities in the medium of clay and how it shapes communities.
We thrive to observe the social and cultural implications of the ceramic objects that have been collected by the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, based on the fact that we are what we collect”
The exhibition will be a visual historiography were “Utility and aesthetic value withheld by these ceramic objects will be explored exhaustively”.
The direction to which this exhaustive study will take shall be supported by a Curatorial Walkabout and a session of the Harare Conversations that will take place after the exhibition opens on August 23 in the Bernard Matemera and Joseph Ndandarika Galleries of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Harare.
The project will explore the utilitarian as well as the purely formal expression of artists in ceramics; the cultural and social implications of the ceramics that have been collected by the National Gallery of Zimbabwe.