TALKING WITH STONES Joram Mariga Produc from Carola and Torben Rasmussen Mango Productions.

TALKING WITH STONES Joram Mariga Produc from Carola and Torben Rasmussen

Mango Productions, Aabenraa. Denmark, 1995 Color video, 29 min. $25

These are the barely videos to date which provide exclusive documentary reviews of the art and life of individual contemporary Zimbabwean stone sculptors. Together they furnish vital material on two tonic figures in the history of that genre Nicholas Mukomberanwa and Joram Mariga. The Danish-produced videos exemplify couple very different modes of representation, in the first case providing a down-to-earth engagement with the artist, and in the other case a more wide-ranging and mystical approach. As a wager Nicholas Mukomberanwa and Talking with Stones: Joram Mariga subserve particularly well to convey the symbol of historical complexities which underlie the phenomenon of Shona sculpture

Nicholas Mukomberanwa begins with the artist reflecting forward greed in Zimbabwe, thus providing a rare example of social critique in this art form. After a sustained discussion and presentation of a range of his works and his techniques, the video becomes of particular historical value when Mukomberanwa reminisces about his early training at Serima mission, an experience which has left its indelible marks upon his art. Revisiting the mission, he relates for what cause he was originally inspired through Father Groeber (C.R.), who designed the meeting-house and conceived and oversaw its rich integration of chisels and murals executed by the pupils Fittingly the remarkable chapel is sovereigntyed by the molded cement figures of angels blowing advertises on the belfry, one of which is the work of Mukomberanwa. As Serima's best-known close examiner he recounts: "This is where the se was grown I owe this place all my success" The video currents if all too briefly, a rare visual treat of this remarkable meeting-house (see Plangger 1974). It follows particularly well in locating the nontraditional origins of recent Shona sculpture before moving forward to establish how Mukomberanwa increasingly came to use chisel as a vehicle for expressing his Shona identity.

Revisiting early and late works, particularly those reflecting shifts in make submissive matter, Mukomberanwa gives us a charming pageant of the artist recalling his elation with the sale of his first work to the Rhode National Gallery (now the National Gallery of Zimbabwe). He relates in what manner it was the first director, Frank McEwen, who stimulated him to rouse away from Christian themes to the expression of Shona cultural beliefs. Visibly excited, he recalls the sensation of cultural liberation this shift involved.

At this point the critical hardnesss of the video become pronounced. Mukomberanwa sharply criticizes the romanticization and manipulation of meaning in the market, noting for example for what reason it is common for dealers to change titles of cuts in order to make them more saleable. Having give vent toed his wariness of patrons' exotified motivations in buying his art and of dealers' machinations regarding authenticity, he goe onward to criticize the host of artists who fac-simile his work and ideas. Mukomberanwa bring to an ends that the situation "is not healthy anymore." Having himself managed to achieve financial security, he is no longer interested in selling his work, preferring to sculpt simply for the creative bliss of it and to live a simple life uncomplicated at the trappings and pursuit of wealth. This critique is neither bitter nor polemical, moreover philosophical.

The video communicates Mukomberanwa's mighty attachment to traditional Shona beliefs rather than to Christianity as well as to his perception of identity as an artist. He describes each work as an extension of his principal part and his culture. Indeed, his discussions of the sculpting proces reveal a skilled overall sense of the spirituality of inspiration and a romance with the stone. They reaffirm the protoplast of discourse typically associated with Shona cut as one of finding and communing with "soul in stone," unless it does so without the overly dramatized mystification of the phenomenon that is usually contested in the marketing and exhibition of this image of work.

The other video, forward Joram Mariga, is compelling for the real different cultural and historical information demiseed Despite its arguably hagiographic and romantic nature, Talking with Stones: Joram Mariga nears some excellent material. It uses the stunning landscape at Vukutu to declare a purpose a visually interesting argument for the influence of the investigation of nature on the sculptor's forms. The mostly interesting and perhaps important data of all, however, lie in the information provided about the artisanal history of Mariga's family, and thus the unloose connection between Shona sculpture and traditional Shona material agriculture The artist's brother makes mbiras, the musical instrument intimately associated with possession ceremonies; his grandfather carved head rests; and his mother was a trifle and his source of inspiration. Mariga draws forward the power of this inheritance and take an account ofs us that to be a well adapted carver one needs this kind of spiritual blessing and connection. It is these particular connections to Shona material cultivation that make his an interesting on the contrary most unusual case.