The Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture ministry and the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (NGZ), recently announced the country’s representatives for Zimbabwe’s 8th Pavilion, at the 61st edition of La Biennale di Venezia, next year.
The privileged artists include Gideon Gomo, Eva Raath, Franklyn Dzingai and Felix Shumba. The fifth artist is Pardon Mapondera, whose recent solo exhibition titled Dotipaiwo Chiedza at the NGZ introduced a paradigm shift from conventional thinking and mainstream narratives.
Mapondera cannot avoid name-dropping his older brother, the accomplished visual artist Wallen.
The younger brother may have lived under the shadow of his sibling for some time, but he continues to shine brighter in his own right.
From the beginning, the younger Mapondera has worked like his own man, developing a style and approach that can never be compared to his brother.
His landmark institutional exhibition at the NGZ portends his coming of age.
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After years of consistently showing strong work in various local and international group exhibitions, he has clearly paid his dues.
It appears that for Mapondera, the most urgent crisis is a lack of spiritual vision and guidance.
When most of his male compatriots and older peers are pre-occupied with polemic socio-economic issues and transfixed with climate politics, while some appear to be unconsciously trapped within the post-colonial ideological framework.
For the latest milestone of his career, the NGZ School of Visual Arts alumnus must have clearly weighed the stakes and applied due diligence to every detail. The carefully assembled displays are encoded with subliminal didactic elements that take the viewer deep into the metaphysical realm.
The spiritual themes explored in this project echo the subject of his previous contribution to the group exhibition REFLECT. REIMAGINE. RESET at THK Gallery in Cape Town, in 2021. In a published review, Barnabas Ticha Muvhuti commented on Mapondera’s work, observing that, “The artist ruminates on the profoundly unsettling dark matters of African spirituality…”
Dotipaiwo Chiedza continues in a similar vein, grappling with non-secular light and darkness.
The show is not a spectacle for stage lights, where one can pretend to understand by saying that it's “beautiful”. The ambiance calls for contemplation, like the Rothko Chapel. It is a muted shrine and a site for divine intervention. The title of the exhibition becomes a form of prayer addressed to Vadzimu and Musikavanhu.
The artist shows commitment to the metaphysical through an evolving aesthetic that cannot be undersold to broad materialistic values.
For example, it is clear that the supposed mayonnaise jar no longer has anything to do with dressing of desserts and consumerism, when it is converted to a lamp and possibly a petrol bomb.
Symbolic objects that many can relate to are combined in a didactic way, forming clues to a riddle that opens up fourth-dimensional perception.
The paraffin lamp, the nhekwe snuff containers, the shards of mirror and cowrie shells with carved gaping faces appear to warn of spiritual traps that derail individuals and society from fulfilling their goals.
Vana Sorojena is a traditional term of deference to those who have lived long enough to have a crown of gray hair, signifying maturity, wisdom and responsibility as custodians of traditional customs and spiritual values.
The work carrying the title is made up of jars carrying disembodied heads with strands of white yarn to stand for gray hair. Dotipaiwo Chiyedza, the titular installation, is a collection of paraphernalia used at a divination.
This includes a snuff container, traditional beer, cowrie shells, and clay bowls spread out over a symbolic hanga fabric (black cloth spotted with white dots), which is typically worn by spirit mediums.
The title Red Beret is commonly used as an informal name for Zimbabwe’s Military Police, who are feared because they can wield their power over both civilians and regular agents of law enforcement.
The term is also a moniker for the moonshine sold in 200ml plastic bottles capped with a red top. Whatever the artist’s ultimate message, the work carries a sense of agency.
Spiritual bomb is a two-part installation that invokes visions of protest, anarchy and rebellion. The artist appropriates protest symbols associated with violence and anarchy into tools for spiritual warfare.
Vana Mukanya are molds of baboon heads representing a totem. The use of totems as a form of identity promotes ethnicity and traditional spiritual values against the homogenised Shona people’s identity created by the colonial project.
A public engagement installation literally puts the participant in a corner, where a chair is placed as an invitation to sit down and read a book.
In a way, it challenges the viewer to disengage from dopamine addicted doom scrolling on mobile devices and find time to educate themselves.
The literature also hints at the amount of research that goes into the making of art, where there is a general misconception that it’s all just a big bang of inspiration.
In the past, Mapondera was apprehensive because he considered himself to be a neophyte. Matare, the traditional forum for consultations on matters of spiritual import, is usually not led by youngsters. The artist expressed his reservations to Muvhuti, who writes, “Although Mapondera is audacious enough to initiate this difficult conversation, he is continuously worried about who will pay attention to an emerging voice on a subject of such depth.”
However, he has stopped chafing about it and goes straight to the crux of the matter without further apology.
In this exhibition, the artist appears to have been driven by righteous indignation to step up, like David against the giant Goliath in the epic biblical showdown.
For a youthful person of his stature, Mapondera has made an unequivocally confrontational move, while he is surrounded by many hardened warriors and people who are seemingly ambivalent to the cause and unwilling to pick up the slack.
But he is not brash and reckless. He has grown older, gained more maturity, earned more respect and appears to be more certain of his mission.
There are other male artists whose work delves into spiritual subject matter. That includes Terrence Musekiwa, Clive Mukucha, and Option Nyahunzvi. What is remarkable with Mapondera’s work is not that he has done it better, but his palpable conviction that the battle is not against flesh and blood. Mapondera does not merely assert his beliefs — he challenges fundamental assumptions about reality and in the process redefines his role as an artist.