The situation today, and my perspective of being out there...
Zimbabwe has been isolated from the rest of the world for the past 20 years.
Tom Blomefield, tobacco farmer, shifted his farm into an arts community tosurvive the crash of tobacco sales that hit the country in the mid 70s through
sanctions. This act made many local farm workers convert their hands to
sculpture as a means to survive the loss of their jobs.This was the birth of
Tengenenge, in 1966.
Tengenenge is the most well-known sculpture community in the whole of the
South African Countries, and has a wide reputation in the history of African
sculpture. The community currently faces enormous difficulty in keeping the
community alive and running, and yet currently there are still about 250 artists
who live in Tengenenge, who follow in the sculpture traditions that have been
set up there since the 60s.
In 1987 a report by the then italian ambassador to Zimbabwe described Tengenenge
community as “a close knit colony of intense activity, in a district of the savannah,
close to a mine, that seemed far from the world; always poor, these people are prepared
to sacrifice even nutritional needs for the joy of creativity”
From my experience of being out there this description remains close to the truth,
and perhaps even more so today than it was back in 1987. Ever since the land
reclamation acts in 2000 were put in place, tourism has been extremely low in
Zimbabwe, thus bringing a complete crash in the number of buyers coming to the
community. Before this, there were a number of times the community was flourishing.
Now they get only about half a dozen visitors a month, who usually only buy a
few small pieces. What amazes me is that despite this, the artists continue to
produce sculpture, as if it were a necessity of life to express oneself through art.
