MAVIS Tauzeni’s impressive visual artwork portraying the plight of women at the First Floor Gallery was recently given audible elucidation through renowned poet Linda Gabriel’s exciting performance.
BY KENNEDY NYAVAYA
The show, titled In Eve’s Garden, attracted a diverse crowd that witnessed a rare juxtaposition of fine art and spoken word poetry to portray the untold suffering women face in a society that is still mired in patriarchal constructions.
Gabriel told NewsDay ahead of her performance that most of her work was centred on female activism because as an artiste, she felt the need to use her liberty to represent the suppressed voices of other women.
“Most of my work (on the performance night) will be from diaries of people who were not able to say certain things, but as artistes, we have the liberty to say them. It is because the stories need to be told, and I happen to be gifted,” Gabriel said.
Tauzeni felt the poems completed her paintings which are a vivid representation of suppressed female figures yearning to break free.
Gabriel, an award-winning poet, has of late been doing collaborative shows with artistes from different spectrums every Tuesday at Maestro, engaging in dialogue with the audiences and she says this has helped her grow into a better artiste.
“It is a model I have chosen to do with my performances. It allows me to answer questions about my work and this helps me grow because some give constructive criticism and hearing from the audience enables me to see situations differently,” she said.
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She said her strategy of using an easy-going style had made her poetry more understandable to audiences.
“Judging from the responses I get when performing the poems, I can tell people enjoy them. Although some are shy, some get uncomfortable. I was once told that I’m too explicit in some of my work,” she said.
