Uproot / Manual / Harvest / Refuge by WHATIFTHEWORLD

Michele Mathison

Contents

Uproot / Manual / Harvest / Refuge

Talisman. Fetish. Nationalist Symbol.

by Michele Mathison and Andrew Meldrum

Through the ages the Zimbabwe Birds have been worshipped, idolized, fetishized, denied, revered, used to exhort the liberation struggle and used to claim legitimacy. The stolid, implacable stone bird has been a symbol upon which diverse, often opposing, figures have laid their claims to Zimbabwe. Carved from soapstone, the Zimbabwe Birds were of great importance to the city of Great Zimbabwe whose towering 11-meter stone walls were so expertly constructed from shaped granite blocks that they still stand today. The city and the Great Zimbabwe kingdom flourished between the 12th and 15th Centuries. In the granite boulders above the Great Enclosure, the rulers and spiritual healers built areas of congregation and ritual, which contained several of the carved bird sculptures. The birds, about 33 cm in height, were carved from the same single piece of rock as the plinth for a total height of 1.6 meters. They are believed to be representations of an eagle, either the Fish Eagle or Bateleur both native to Zimbabwe. The carvings appear to have been central figures in ceremonies in which rulers and healers communicated with ancestors. In the 1880s European explorers came to Great Zimbabwe, which by then was in decline. The birds were still in the upper enclosures and respected by those who lived nearby, including the brother of chief Mugabe, who objected in 1889 when hunter/explorer Willie Posselt started to cut one down in order to take it away. Posselt eventually succeeded in negotiating the purchase of the bird. Later five other birds were taken from Great Zimbabwe by Theodore Bent and housed in the South Africa Museum in Cape Town. One half of a bird went to Germany. 4

British colonialist Cecil Rhodes bought the bird taken by Posselt and kept it at Groote Schuur, his residence in Cape Town. Rhodes maintained the birds were proof that an earlier European or Mediterranean civilization, such as the Phoenicians or the Queen of Sheba, had ruled in Africa. Rhodes used the birds to claim legitimacy to his imposition of colonial rule over the country that he named after himself, Rhodesia. According to contemporary accounts, Rhodes was obsessed by his bird, bringing it out to show guests and during Cabinet meetings. He had replicas made as gifts for friends and reproductions of the birds are prominent throughout his home, on doorplates and balustrades. During the rule of Rhodesian leader Ian Smith in the 1960s and 70s, the birds were used as symbols of the rebellious nation – appearing on currency, postage stamps and other logos. Rhodesian officials promoted the myth that the birds were created by non-African cultures. They censored reports and academic scholarship that said the birds were created by the local Shona. African Nationalists fighting against white minorityruled Rhodesia employed the birds as symbols against colonialism. The enduring potency of the birds as symbols is shown by the fact that the bird features in the Zimbabwe flag, on coins and at the president’s residence. In 1979, shortly before Zimbabwe became independent and majority-ruled, the brief Rhodesia-Zimbabwe government began negotiations with apartheid-ruled South Africa for the looted birds to be repatriated. In 1981 five of the birds were exchanged for an unrivaled collection of bees and wasps belonging to the Natural History Museum in Bulawayo. In 2003 a partial bird was returned to Zimbabwe from Germany. The birds are at Great Zimbabwe Museum where they are open to public viewing. 5

President Robert Mugabe, in power for 35 years, celebrated his 92nd birthday at festivities at Great Zimbabwe. Images of the birds were prominently displayed as symbolic assertions of the legitimacy of Mugabe’s continued rule. The Zimbabwe birds continue to be the center of controversy. One bird remains in the bedroom of the Rhodes residence in Cape Town and activists are campaigning for the sculpture to be returned to Zimbabwe. References Dewey, W.J. 2006. Repatriation of a Great Zimbabwe Stone Bird. In Proceedings of Society of Africanist Archaeologist’s 18th Biennial Conference, University of Calgary, Alberta. Hubbard, P. 2009. The Zimbabwe birds: interpretation and symbolism. Honeyguide (2009) 55(2) 109 Edward Matenga, 2011: The Soapstone Birds of Great Zimbabwe: Archaeological Heritage, Religion and Politics in post colonial Zimbabwe and the Return of Cultural Property. Studies in global archeology 16. Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University

Uprooted

A conversation with Michele Mathison by Houghton Kinsman

Born in South Africa, raised in Zimbabwe, Michele Mathison has a deeply complex personal story. It is one that is characterised by an ongoing process of (re) locating. That is to say, he is something of a journeyman. Amidst the backdrop of this current exhibition, Uproot, at London’s Tyburn Gallery, One can’t help but draw parallels between Mathison’s practice and his own personal journey. Assuming many guises, this path has taken him to places far and wide, and helped develop in him a keen sense of who he is, and where he comes from. However, he will be the first to say [that] to read this deeply into his personal story would be to miss the boat a little. Specifically because while his work may be informed by his personal journey, on the whole it tends to deal with issues that speak much more to collective rather than individual experience. Mathison repeatedly deals with broad themes, such as migrancy, labour, land, history and materiality. Additionally, his works – primarily sculptural – often consciously blur the line between readymade and fabrication. Here, they exist as reworkings of utilitarian, functional objects that somehow through the creative process lose, and then come to imply their own functionality. Mathison deftly illustrates this in his work Breaking Ground, which shows a pickaxe suspended in time and space. The pickaxe can no longer dig. Yet, through sculptural repetition and the implied movement it creates the sense that it is digging. Consisting of three works, Plot, Lost Ground and the Chapungu, Shiri Yedenga series, the exhibition forms a visual narrative of Sub-Saharan Africa’s collective concern. What follows below, is a conversation which delves into the core of Mathison’s practice: it highlights his interest in Zimbabwean history and craft, his own migratory experience and what it means to be uprooted.

I suppose this idea of moving around is deeply connected to your own personal story. Am I correct in saying you were born in South Africa?

I was born in South Africa, grew up in Zimbabwe and then came back to South Africa [for university]. [After graduating] I moved back to Zim for a while after which I … came to the UK … to do some construction work. …Then [I] went back to South Africa, where and I have spent most of my time for the last 10 years or so.

The way you have moved around seems somehow connected to the way the exhibitions themselves have unfolded. For example Harvest (2013) for the Zimbabwean Pavilion, then onto South Africa for Manual (2014) and now Uproot (2016) in the UK. Do you see the exhibitions as an extension of your own uprooting?

Yes certainly, but then again I have always felt that my experience is similar to many others within my generation or peer group. I like to think that in some way I am representative … as the idea of being uprooted is quite prevalent amongst my generation of Zimbabweans. Specifically, because we were all so well educated. The one thing that Mugabe did really well for the country was to educate the entire population almost. It was very easy for us to be able to move around. If I look at my group of high school friends, I would say 80 to 90% of them now live in the UK or in the US. This creates a tension, especially because in Zimbabwe there is such a strong spiritual connection to the land. … Shona culture is very deeply connected to ancestors and where they are buried. So, I think it was quite difficult for Shona people to be in foreign countries and then have to adjust their belief systems, outside of having family back at home. It needs to be said: it’s difficult to stay connected to both places.

In connection to what you mention above, and cognizant of the colonial history between the UK and Zimbabwe, being that Uproot is being shown in London, has it taken on a different dimension?

I’m hoping it does. I’m hoping that people will recognise the influence of Zimbabweans abroad; that’s why I wanted to plant my field of maize. It was almost a purposeful taking over of ground – a kind of land invasion and I like how the idea of the maize patch comes to symbolise that… I work opposite an informal settlement, where people live in shanty houses and yet you still find small plots of maize in this urban environment. There is this one particular guy who has terraced [the] land outside his house and planted maize…for me there is this idea that when you move somewhere and plant food, you take ownership in a way of that land. You are colonising it I suppose. And I like the irony of that journey: the English colonising

Zimbabwe and Southern Africa, and now Zimbabweans are sort of colonising England. London has become such a multi-racial, multicultural city, it is so intriguing. You hardly hear people speaking English. Rather, it is Arabic, French, Italian or Shona; so it’s an interesting place to be. That brings me to your interest in migrancy. In a globalised world where travel is easier than ever before and we have more opportunity for crosscultural collaboration/dialogue, it feels as though migrancy within this context is a pertinent topic.

Yes of course, and … don’t forget that there are the different layers of migrancy. Many Zimbabweans were lucky enough at some point to be offered free passage into the UK seeking asylum. Obviously, [the UK] soon put a handbrake on that and it became more difficult. But there is something to be said for the many levels [of ] migrancy: from the poorest of the poor to the wealthiest of people. Everyone is moving around, in different ways, to different places … trying to find their place.

Where does your interest in migrancy and labour stem from?

It really stems from the exodus that happened in Zimbabwe. It came as such a shock to us. I think that’s why so many Zimbabweans have an attachment to the country – especially my generation – because we grew up over the course of those 10 or 15 years [since full democracy was achieved in 1980] in Zimbabwe when it was an incredibly peaceful place. It was full of hope, full of care, full of understanding. There was such a strong sense of community. [So] over the course of the next 5 years, for that to be transformed and for people to suddenly be leaving the country – none of us expected that. …You ask any Zimbabwean and they will tell you that they have some cousin, aunt or uncle scattered somewhere around the world.

And, in terms of labour? I remember chatting with you about Manual and in particular about how labour intensive some of the artworks were. Could you speak to the act of labour in the actual making of the work?

There is an interesting story here that relates to Zimbabweans and their affinity for craft making. One of the most popular craft products that Zimbabweans manufacture in South Africa are these metal birds often sold on the side of the road. They are very lightweight, and hand forged. A little kitschy and touristy but also beautifully made. … The idea of their craft and the labour of making sculpture is … closely linked to the history of craft-making and art making in Zimbabwe

whether it be stone or metal work. Also, there is a complex tension between those who make art and those who make crafts. So, the idea to make the maize out of steel is closely connected to the way in which Zimbabweans are able to go to the UK or come to South Africa and make or sell their crafts, essentially earning a living in this way. … for Uproot there is a follow-on from Manual in terms of ideas around labour.

Do you see the three exhibitions as following on from each other?

Definitely. Especially, as I have looked at the work more closely. I see Zimbabwe as being a starting point. Harvest was really kind of rural, and then with Manual there was the influence of labour in urban South Africa. Now, the influence of the UK can be felt with Uproot. There definitely has been a journey I think between these three exhibitions.

And these objects, although they look like readymades, aren’t they actually fabricated?

That is correct. I like to play with the materiality of the object. I haven’t used many readymades for Uproot. However, in a sense I have because my interpretation of the Zimbabwe Birds is linked to the original birds. There has been a lot of replication of the birds – they have almost become a curio. Something, which once again goes back to curio art-making in Zimbabwe, where you can buy these little birds on the side of the road. Consequently, they have become iconic sculpted images across the country. … I wanted to go back to what the birds originally looked like. Specifically, because of the way they have been reinterpreted so many times and in so many ways. At one point I was trying to access the original moulds, but then decided to reinterpret them myself from historical photography.

This is a good point to talk about the influence of history on your practice. Aside from [Chapungu, Shiri yedenga (sky bird), 2015], in general it feels as though [history] occupies an important position in relation to your work.

I have always been interested in the idea of history and repetition – you look at the walls that were built for Great Zimbabwe, and they were said to be completely non-functional, almost only decorative. They were there to represent the power, wealth and social behavior of the Zimbabwean kingdom. Fast forward, 600~700 years later and people are still building mansions to show off their wealth, sometimes replicating the very same stone

walls. Also, Great Zimbabwe has such a strong spiritual and patriotic history with Zimbabweans. So for Uproot I really went far back … all, the way to the 13th century in fact. And that journey of the birds was so captivating. In particular, how they were stolen from the site and then taken to South Africa. Some were scattered around Europe, and then repatriated back to Zimbabwe. All of them have been returned, except for that one that is still stuck in Rhodes’ house in Cape Town. This discussion has somehow continued to return to the theme of the journey, specifically in how people and objects are uprooted and then repatriated…

Exactly! With the birds everything just clicked. Because the journey of the birds both figuratively and literally, also represented that idea of migration; they have become a metaphor for what is happening now.

And, even though they are art objects, they still also migrate. There is a connection to the way bird’s move, the way that art objects move in the art world and how people move.

I know and the language is all the same. You use the term resident when you describe a bird species. Then there is the process of migration and then repatriation. The language is all tied together. I thought it was very appropriate.

Uproot / Manual / Harvest / Refuge

Workerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Day

by Beaven Tapureta

As the sun shoots over the horizon We put our tools down Go home fagged out, time wilts into dreams Every day Go home after work Every day For a month, like insatiate bees, males and females Go to and fro Calling ourselves workers For the whole damn month And what do we dig up? The sun rises Colouring our sweat-smeared faces Tools injure our hands Our backs go limp Yet here we go again Unpaid Unheard Unwanted Every day We wipe our tears away We hope for a month And what do we dig up? Me the security guard Protect I protect But I am not protected Him the teacher He teaches but all he is taught In return, is how to be broke Her the nurse She nurses the future with uncertain Hope Them the builders Build palaces but their homes are pyres And others, being artists, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get their dues O workers, arise, arise!

Manual

Ralph Borland

In the kitchen, your footprints, they go hard and I have to chip them away. You leave concrete behind you everywhere... I’m gonna wash everything here, wash it all out ten times to get the dust of you out of it. I won’t have to deal with your footprints turning to stone on the kitchen floor anymore. It’s finished. This isn’t your home. - Locke, Steven Knight, Shoebox Films/IM Global, 2013

A flurry of spades; a rain of pickaxes; a thicket of chainsaw blades. Jerry cans, plasticine-yellow, stacked in a two-wheeled cart. Bundles of grey concrete kindling, and a landscape of burnt wood. Dirty-white shirts in a washtub; grey-metal casts of cow heads. A tipped-over wheelbarrow, and a chainsaw propped on a breeze-block – a light name for a heavy thing. Zimbabwean artist Michele Mathison’s exhibition Manual is a tableau of art works along the theme of labour. Michele came from Zimbabwe to South Africa to go to art school in the late 1990s. He works now in an industrial area of Johannesburg, making his labour-intensive pieces by hand, frequently casts or copies of familiar, everyday objects from South Africa and Zimbabwe (familiar at least to the povo if not the privileged). His work plays on the experience of the Southern African migrant, the manual worker. In ‘Dig down’, dozens of bare-metal spades with hard black-rubber handles dig and scrape at the ground, fused together in a multiple-exposure of work – turning now left, now right, forward and back, up and down. They are a condensed expression of a few minutes of labour, made monument – a sculptural expression of a work and motion study. In their hardness and their military tones, worn metal, they hint at the violence of work: this exertion, this digging and scraping, this biting into and relocating of unseen earth. This thread of violence continues in ‘Breaking ground’: a hard rain of matte black pickaxes, striking down in an

arc from overhead, neck-deep into concrete. Painted black, they seem abstracted into ur-tools, symbols of tools – like the hoe on the Mozambiquan flag, crossed by an AK-47: the agricultural tool as a symbol of revolution. Work is political (the hammer and the sickle) – who does it, for whom, for how much, and under what conditions? The weapon and the tool; the tool become weapon, the threat of the tool-wielders against those they sweat for. Work is inherently violent upon the present, a means of changing what is to what is desired. For the new to come, what’s there is cleared away. In Shona, gukura hundi, ‘the rain that sweeps away the chaff’ – the Zimabwean state’s brutal suppression of political rivals in Matabeleland soon after independence; or murambatsvina, ‘drive out rubbish’ – a ‘slum clearance’ programme which saw the demolition of houses and markets in opposition strongholds in Harare in 2005. In Ruanda, hate radio used the euphemism of ‘work’ for genocide: pick up your tools and go to work. Work enacts violence not just on its object, but on the worker – it breaks backs, grinds bodies down, costs ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears’: the title of an assemblage of concrete wash-basins, containing identical submerged shirts frozen in the process of washing. The four basins form quadrants, like the cells of a honeycomb. They are full of the salty fruits of labour: dirty-white shirts, the meagre possessions of a labourer, washed in rotation, knuckles rubbing against concrete ridges in cold bleached water. Along with thread-bare clothing, poor food, in the form of cow heads, cast in bronze. In ‘Head on a plate’, they sit heavy as cannon balls, grey in the bare-metal cage of a shopping trolley. Their muzzles are curiously softlooking, burnished noses pressed up against the wire – a moment of sensitivity and softness, and one of the only near living things in the exhibition. Michele queued for these at the abbatoir in Johannesburg, where offal 57

and cheap cuts are sold and carted off by the poor: sheep and cow heads, trotters, tongues, chicken’s feet. Here this poor food is monumentalised – it will not rot, but neither will it be consumed. From this cold comfort, moments of lightness: ‘Dagga Boy’, an overturned wheelbarrow, cast in concrete, followed by an arc of metal legs, a wavy mandala. The ‘dagga boy’ – the ‘cement boy’ on a building site, though also ‘marijuana boy’ – has tipped over his wheelbarrow and left the scene. Perhaps he is nearby, smoking a newspaper zol and admiring his Futurist construction – he has kicked over the traces, these psychedelic trails. The wheelbarrow is represented not by a cast of the metal barrow itself, but of its interior, a Rachel Whiteread-esque or Bruce Nauman-like gesture. Like Nauman, sitting in his first bare studio looking for material for art, and casting the underside of his chair, perhaps this worker too is turning his everyday to art, and turning from work, to art. And in identifying with the worker’s process of casting and making, Michele draws attention to the similarities between his work processes and his subject’s. This resonance with art made by workers is echoed in ‘Chainsaw’, an oxblood-red chainsaw, its body cast in concrete from a jerry can, with a toothless flat-metal blade – a convincing, cartoonish imitation of a chainsaw. This is not the artist’s representation of a chainsaw however, but his representation of a representation of a chainsaw: a hero version of a Zimbabwean tree feller’s roadside sign. They make their dummy chainsaws too from jerry cans and scrap, sculptural multiples advertising their services. The artist here uses a street idiom to engage in a creative conversation with workers and craftsmen, speaking their vernacular. The oxblood-red is cheery, and tender: it is an iconic and nostalgic Zimbabwean colour, of wax floor polish on stoeps and verandahs.

The chainsaws in ‘Tree Cutter’ are in contrast bare grey cement, heaped up like bones, their blades angled this way and that in a wall of cuts. The angles of the blades imply some animation, chopping at a tree from left and right – an accumulation of work perhaps, from the single stroke at the apex of the pyramid, multiplying as it cuts down, down, down. But they look too like a stack or a store of tools, more waiting for use than in motion, in contrast to the frenetic animation of spades and pickaxes; their function is hinted at, but they are as much static, stockpiled, waiting for animation. They seem leached of colour in comparison to the oxblood ‘Chainsaw’ – bloodless.

‘Bushveld’, a backdrop to the exhibition, is a triptych several metres wide made from planks of salvaged wood. It is the only piece in the exhibition that uses pictorial representation. It has been painstakingly worked over, covered with thousands of small chiselled marks. It is cunningly done: where a tree is scorched into charcoal relief, a knot in the wooden plank becomes a knot in the tree branch (an eye for an eye). In Zimbabwe the fields are often burnt in spring, producing the illusion of black topsoil. Across the burnt landscape, small shoots are apparent, gouged by hand into the black wood. In a scorched tableau, some indication of a coming spring.

Their cement-grey is shared by the sculptures in ‘Fuel’, stacks of bundled wood kindling cast in concrete. This is magic wood, unburnable, petrified; perhaps it was cut with the toothless blade of ‘Chainsaw’ next to it – a dummy economy of cargo-cult chainsaws and replica wood. Like the sealed reproductions of yellow fuel cans carried on a cart, in the installation ‘Load Bearing’, or the uneatable cow heads, these bundles of wood are full of frozen potential, as if cast under a spell, life lurking just below the surface. If the spell was lifted, would colour flood back into wood, as blood and breath back into an enchanted statue? In Michele’s work for the Zimbabwean pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale he exhibited a heap of cast ceramic mielies: like Ai Wei Wei’s sunflower seeds, to which the work pays tribute, the corn will never sprout, or be eaten. So these bundles of wood, and fuel-filled jerry cans, yellow as the sun, cannot fuel anything, can only be stacked and shuffled, carted around. All lie waiting for a transformation to release their energy: to burn, to flower, to fuel motion and light and heat – and to feed the workers.

Uproot / Manual / Harvest / Refuge

A Good Harvest

Andrew Meldrum

Soil, rain, sun, maize. These are universals of Zimbabwean life; the way men and women translate their existence on earth. The majority of the country’s 13 million people live in the rural areas and till the soil for their livelihoods. Preparing the fields, planting seeds and cultivating crops, reaping the produce, storing food for the coming dry season – these are annual rituals. This agricultural work reaches into the cities – virtually everyone is linked to life in the rural areas by family and friends. Almost all Zimbabweans have a kumusha, their rural home. I remember when Milka Ngazana, an 89-year-old Shona granny, was staying with us to recuperate from an illness. It was November, when the crackling dry heat of October is eventually broken by the life-giving rains. Clouds gathered, thunder crashed and rains fell. Milka became agitated and paced the room. “It’s raining. I must get back to my fields. It is time to plant my seeds,” she said. We tried to persuade her that her son and daughterin-law would be taking care of her plot. “No. I must be there,” she insisted. “I need my badza (hoe). I must be in the fields.” The next day we drove Milka to her to her farm in Seke, south of Harare, and she was out in the damp fields as we departed. Family members said she worked more slowly and cultivated less land, but she remained a superlative farmer. She had a good harvest. It was her last. Maize is the staple food, Zimbabwe’s grain of life. The maize crop determines what is a good year or a bad year. Maize meal is the essential to every meal. Taguta – the Shona word for satisfied – is what people say when they

have eaten their fill. And a meal based on sadza – a stiff maize porridge – gives a special sensation, as it swells a bit when in the stomach. These are elements that touched Michele Mathison’s life growing up in Harare and Bulawayo. Throughout his career as an artist, Mathison has taken ordinary things of southern Africa life and examined them through his sculpture. Using various mediums including ceramic, steel, resin and found objects, he recreates them and assembles them to highlight their exceptional, spiritual qualities. Aloes, barbed wire, telephones, picks - have all been transformed into symbols conveying the richness of contemporary life in southern Africa. As a Zimbabwean artist, raised and schooled there, Mathison explores and illuminates daily life. Zimbabwe is where he first began drawing, painting and sculpting, in classes at the Delta Gallery and at Prince Edward School. He further honed his skills at the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Art where he studied under Jane Alexander and Gavin Younge. His art has flourished in Johannesburg, with significant stays in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. He expresses his appreciation of the lively, shocking, tragic, uplifting mosaic of life in southern Africa, where the neighboring countries are each different yet all intertwined. Postcolonial. Post-independence. Agricultural, rural and urban.

objects and explores how they shape life. It is an approach dramatically different from some South African artists who respond satirically and ironically to current events. As one of the artists representing Zimbabwe at the 2013 Venice Biennale, Mathison has reached further to express the essentials of Zimbabwean life with his elemental installation, Harvest. Tree stumps, maize cobs and hoes become metaphors for the cycle of life in Zimbabwe. Landscape – a collection of tree stumps that are cast from charcoal and resin evoke the clearing of fields for cultivation. They are also reminiscent of trees that are burned to make charcoal, a major economic activity in rural areas. The stumps also conjure images of Zimbabwe’s land upheavals, yet they reach beyond that to affirm the continuity of life. From stumps come new life, shoots and growth. Arms, thighs and torsos reach out suggestively from the stumps. The truncated forest conveys the alpha and omega of life.

His years as a cameraman for CNN correspondent Bob Coen sharpened his graphic eye and also exposed him first-hand to the region’s harsh, historic and, occasionally, elevating events.

Chibage (Shona for maize) – consists of more than 1,000 handmade ceramic reproductions of maize cobs. An homage to Ai Wei Wei’s sunflower seed installation and at the same time a recreation of the heaps of maize cobs that are seen throughout Zimbabwe’s rural areas at harvest time. After being picked from the stalks, the cobs of maize are husked and laid out to dry in the sun before storage in a granary. It is a crucial stage of the agricultural year. A large pile means full stomachs through the year. A small pile bodes lean times and hunger.

As an artist, Mathison responds to contemporary southern African life as a documentarist. His southern African re-interpretation of Arte Povera lifts mundane

Maize is the staple food integral to life in southern Africa, but it is an imported crop, brought to Africa some 500 years ago by Portuguese from Latin America. The plump

maize kernels quickly replaced the more scrawny indigenous sorghum and millet grains to become an essential element of life in southern Africa. Ikhuba (Ndebele for hoe) – an Eadweard Muybridge-like evocation of the action of raising and swinging down a hoe to dig up the earth and prepare a field for seed. The continuing effort needed to grow more food. The hoe is so potent a symbol of life in southern Africa that it is featured in Zimbabwe’s coat of arms and Mozambique’s flag – where it is crossed with an AK-47 rifle, a southern African version of the hammer and sickle. Each item – stump, maize cob and hoe – has been touched by the hand of man and together they show how many Zimbabweans define their lives on earth. The objects are filled with emotion – hopes, heartbreak, ambition, disappointment, pride and love. Andrew Meldrum is a journalist who has lived in southern Africa for 28 years, writing for The Guardian, The Economist and The Associated Press.

Uproot / Manual / Harvest / Refuge

Seeking Refuge

On 12 May 2008 a series of deadly riots started in the township of Alexandra, Johannesburg. Locals attacked migrants from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi and other African countries. In the following weeks the violence spread, first to other areas around Gauteng, then to Durban and Cape Town. Most of the attacks took place in townships and informal settlements. The violence left 62 people dead and more than 100 000 people displaced from their homes. The UNHCR as well as local municipalities and government were forced to setup temporary camps with rows of white tents in designated areas around the country. These camps had to be secured and guarded in an effort to avoid more attacks on the displaced communities living there. The camps became a focus for the political and moral wrangling of the country. The camps interrupted the entire physical, political and social landscape. They became a stark reminder of the violence and trauma that had taken place. There was an outcry from the general public about the xenophobic attacks but the reality on the ground meant that these camps had to be used for several months and in some cases up to a year before people felt safe enough to return to their homes and rebuild their lives. Michele Mathisonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Refuge installation is made up of 20 white tents constructed out of steel poles and woven plastic sheeting to resemble those built during the attacks in 2008. This work has a specific resonance to the events in South Africa but also addresses the continued struggle for refugees in conflict situations around the African continent. The white tents embody the hopes and fears of communities and families that have been displaced. The question that hangs on the covers of these white shelters is: when will they be needed again? For the people who

are forced to live in them, the uncertainty surrounding their future and security is expressed in the flimsy and vulnerable structures. The tents in Mathisonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s installation do not have any doors or windows making them completely inaccessible. The narrow paths between the tents create a contemplative maze. The desire to access the tents transforms into a personal journey through the space, in between the white plastic sheets. These seemingly functional shelters cease to be useful. They transform into objects of memory and reflection. The covers are made from woven plastic, a type of fabric commonly used to make bags for packaging and storage. It is easily found and has increased value among displaced and migrant communities because it makes a useful supplement to roofs and covers. The installation serves as a temporary memorial of the events that caused the actual camps to be built and a reminder that the conditions for their creation and continued existence still prevail.

Index

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Installation View

Chapungu #1 Shiri Yedenga (Sky Bird) 2015 Cast iron and wood 183 x 39 x 40 cm

Plot 2015 Steel and plaster 44 parts each 230 x 120 x 13 cm

Lost Ground 2015 Gypsum 214 x 349.9 x 5 cm

Courtesy of Tyburn Gallery, London

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PAGE 18 -19

PAGE 3 0

Lost Ground (Detail) 2015 Gypsum 214 x 349.9 x 5 cm

Installation View

Breaking Ground 2014 Steel and enamel 203 x 104 x 40cm

Courtesy of Tyburn Gallery, London

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PAGE 3 3

PAGE 3 4 -3 5

PAGE 3 6 -37

Breaking Ground (Detail) 2014 Steel and enamel 203 x 104 x 40cm

Fuel 2014 Cast concrete Dimensions variable

Fuel (Detail) 2014 Cast concrete Dimensions variable

Load Bearing 2014 Cart: Steel and enamel 20 Jerry Cans: Cast ceramic 255 x 103 x 107 cm 84

PAGE 3 8

PAGE 4 0 - 41

PAGE 4 2

PAGE 4 3

Jerry Can 2014 Cast ceramic and paint 25 x 27.5 x 14.5 cm Edition of 25

Head On A Plate 2014 Galvanized steel and bronze 88 x 84 x 50 cm Edition of 3

Blood, Sweat And Tears 2014 Cast concrete, salt, cement and steel 140 x 130 x 105 cm

Blood, Sweat & Tears (Detail) 2014 Cast concrete, salt, cement and steel 140 x 130 x 105 cm

PAGE 4 4 - 45

PAGE 4 6

PAGE 47

PAGE 4 8 - 49

Dagga Boy 2014 Steel, enamel & cast concrete 146 x 276 x 54 cm Edition of 3

Tree Cutter 2014 Cast concrete and steel 110 x 142 x 82 cm

Dig Down 2014 Steel and enamel 132 x 220 x 104 cm Multiple of 3

PAGE 5 0

PAGE 52-5 3

PAGE 5 5

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Chainsaw 2014 Cast concrete and paint 21 x 82 x 13 cm Edition of 10

Bushvelt 2014 Burnt wood 720 x 210 x 2 cm

Revolution 2014 Charred wood

Installation View

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PAGE 6 8 - 6 9

Chibage 2013 Ceramic Dimensions variable

Ikhuba 2013 Steel 122 x 244 x 60cm

Ikhuba (Detail) 2013 Steel 122 x 244 x 60cm

Landscape 2013 Charcoal and acrylic resin Dimensions variable

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Refuge 2014 Steel and woven plastic 20 x 20 x 2m

Refuge (Detail) 2014 Steel and woven plastic 20 x 20 x 2m

Michele Mathison

Curriculum Vitae

Education

1997 - 2000 Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art (Honours) University of Cape Town, Michaelis School of Fine Art Biography Contemporary Southern Africa forms an example of a distinct, and new social condition. One in which political and social borders define different political incarnations of African democracy and creates a vast transient community of displaced. For over a decade, Michele Mathison has been living and working on both sides of the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe. His work is a study on the value of common objects and how they have developed into the prevalent imagery and symbols of the regions tumultuous times. By removing the utility from functional objects, Mathison is presenting the irony of their transformation into a symbolic guise. Examining the form and function of quotidian objects, Mathison builds geometric groups and visual fields. Considering how an individual piece relates to the whole, the work creates a narrative of the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s collective concerns.

Exhibitions

2016 Uproot,

Tyburn Gallery, London

Negative Space

WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town

2015

Harvest,

Zeitz MOCAA Scheryn Pavilion, Cape Town

Broken English,

Tyburn Gallery, London

You love me / You love me not Galeria Municipal do Porto

African Odysseys Brass, Brussels

Nirox Sculpture/Winter 2015, Johannesburg

2014

Manual, Solo exhibition WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town

Nirox Sculpture / Winter 2014, Johannesburg

Expressions of Freedom Constitution Hill, Johannesburg

Public sculpture exhibition Arts on Main, Johannesburg

Zoo Nirox projects, Johannesburg 2013

Dudziro Zimbabwe Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale, Venice

Trans-Africa Absa Gallery, Johannesburg

2012 89

Outside the lines WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town Southern Guild Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg

2011

EXIT/EXILE Solo exhibition. Nirox projects, Johannesburg

2009

HIFA National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare

2007

Design indaba Cape Town

2005

Visions of Zimbabwe. Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester

Collections

Zeitz MOCAA Johannesburg, South Africa The ArtColl Trust Seattle, USA Spier Arts Trust Cape Town, South Africa Standard Bank Art Collection Cape Town, South Africa Fondation Sindika Dokolo Luanda, Angola

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