Calling a spade a spade: youth, audacity and bravery in the work of Zim painter Kudzanai Chiurai
by Robyn Sassen
The cliché that artists are generally understood, with their heightened sensitivities, to be prophets, rings with credibility in 'The Revolution will be Televised' an exhibition of new and recent work by Kudzanai Chiurai at Zuva Gallery.
Chiurai challenges categorisation on so many levels that he forces his audience to look at the work directly, and not through a veil of ideology: Zimbabwean by birth, but studying in South Africa; politically confrontational, but only 23 years old; a rugby player but a sensitive artist; born in 1981, the year of Zim's independence, but not free from the shackles of political turbulence and injustice. He also makes profoundly political work which is seductively beautiful to look at.
'The Revolution will be Televised' is this final year Tukkies student's third solo exhibition; the second was in London. All of which makes his presence in South Africa rather a coup.
Choosing not to specialise in his Fine Arts degree, Chiurai, who came to SA from Zimbabwe six years ago, is capitalising on and polishing the range of skills he is learning at Tukkies. This is no typical student show, however. He is articulate and hard-hitting in his visual critique of contemporary Zimbabwe. None of the issues are gauche or self-indulgent, and his drawing is reminiscent of Kentridge in its sophisticated descriptiveness and linear rawness.
Like Kentridge he confronts the slippery issues of complicity and political apathy with aggression, and like Kentridge his work is not prescriptive or simple. Unlike Kentridge, Chiurai lives on the cutting edge of the realities he confronts in his work, though.
He attributes influence to Basquiat, the only black Abstract Expressionist. Chiurai is a quietly spoken but not introspective guy and his dispossessed status as a Zimbabwean is central to the works. He enjoys the informal contemporary aspect of street culture, referring to graffiti as something that 'politicises space' and he sets up a dialogue in his large scale paintings, with graffiti through the use of stencils.
Chiurai proceeds fully aware of the danger he courts in reflecting on Mugabe in a demonic manner, with a characteristic Pop nuance - burning repetitively in hell, against a backdrop of sheep, and on t-shirts which brazenly declare him in as pejorative colours as possible. His London show is one thing, but the local one another - Zimbabwe is frighteningly close and people have been unceremoniously incarcerated for much less.
Chiurai resents contemporary radio station YFM defining black South Africans as a diluted version of their US counterparts. He condemns Y magazine for promoting cultures like hip-hop emptily - today's youth are caught in the immediacy of popular culture, but can't interrogate these imposed values. Chiurai strongly feels that Y is propaganda as insipient as it is dangerous to a sense of local identity among the youth. He comments bitingly on the limp-handed approach of local government to the situation in Zim.
The work itself fits snugly into the intimate space at Zuva. There are two large scale triptychs in oil on canvas and a couple of smaller panel works on paper, as well as t-shirts and bags which represent a snide but sophisticated comment on the nature of expensive art shows. You can come away from a great cultural experience like this with a beautiful t-shirt that offers strong political thrust, without being 'in yer face' or crude, and without dipping into your overdraft with a painting that might be too big for your house.
The imaging draws from Joburg's inner city, and with guttural mark making, sensitive use of colour and a very fine understanding of caricature and anatomy, Chiurai has realised a top class exhibition. It's only on relatively briefly, but is a very powerful insight into what makes a thinking Zimbabwean tick. The situation is rife and real and the immediacy of Chiurai's work is a wake up call to the powers that be.
July 31 - August 15
