ARTIST STATEMENT
My practice aims to offer complex readings on the presence of the past, and the way it informs our ways of seeing. Looking at it from this vantage point, I had to ask myself ‘where does perception start?’ Questioning my role and my responsibility as a photographer led me to challenge the perception-enhancing power of photography by highlighting narratives it missed along the way.
My work attempts to convey a truthful narrative and demonstrate how I engage with issues of invisibility, re-contextualisation and subversion to preconceived ideas of black personhood through the lens of Zimbabwe. I look at how our unchosen histories have shaped our contemporary state. Furthermore, my work speaks directly to the common reality amongst people of colour of an ‘obscured history’, which often negates our individual stories. Thus, making a commentary on history and its selective unfolding. Through photography, I explore the place of African fabric in the refashioning of cultural, racial and gendered identities as well it’s use as a vehicle to challenge structures of power that render certain people’s histories and cultural expressions invisible. In my creations incorporate Shona utensils which are highly recognisable signifiers of tradition. My work gestures towards ways in which I embark on a cultural remaking of the self, contributing to new imaginings of African identities.
Stemming from the desire to recognise the lived truth of others, my work explores several intertwined imaginaries documented through domestic, metropolitan and non-linear spaces. I create suggestive worlds by placing clues about their lives and their sometimes-invented characters into the compositions. Through these fantastical portraits, I attempt to create a new literature which borrows from the artistic thought and practice of both romanticism and realism. In the same way Romanticism took a metaphorical approach to art while Realism took a literal one, I portray everyday people from contemporary life in Zimbabwe, as well as larger than life heroes who exist in history. Furthermore, I express the aspect of realism through the social message in which history is mediated.
My practice aims to show that, in a world filled with limited facts and plenty of misinformation it is important to acknowledge that the things we own – the clothes we wear and the objects we value – tell stories about who we are, what we value, and where we come from.