Zimbabwe stone sculptors are looking for a revival while an Oxford exhibition confronts a British colonial heritage

Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe – A pair of white hands blinding a black face. A smile colonizer With a bible, crushing the skull of a native screaming with his boot. Leaded in the gold mines and a pregnant woman.

These stone sculptures of Zimbabwe will occupy the front of the stage during a next exhibition at the University of Oxford in Great Britain, aimed at “contextualizing” the heritage of the British imperialist Cecil John Rhodes with representations of religious deception, forced labor and sexual abuse.

Rhodes conquered large parts of southern Africa at the end of the 19th century. He made a fortune in the extraction of gold and diamond and seized land of the local population. His grave is under a stone slab at the top of a hill in Zimbabwe.

The Oxford Oriel College, where the exhibition will take place in September, is a symbolic setting. A statue of Rhodes has been there despite protests against her since 2015. Rhodes, who died in 1902, was an Oriel student who left 100,000 pounds (now estimated at around 10.5 million pounds, or $ 13.5 million) at school. Its influence continues by a scholarship for students from southern African countries.

For sculptors of Pierre Zimbabweans in Chitungwiza Arts Center near the capital, Harare, the exhibition is more than an opportunity for the Western public of Get a dark story. It is also a chance to rekindle an ancient art form but in difficulty.

Stone sculpture, once a flourishing local industry has suffered Large economic challenges and declining tourism.

“It will stimulate business. Buyers abroad will now see our work and will buy directly from artists, “said sculptor Wallace Mkanka. His room, representing the blinded black face, was selected as the best of 110 entries and will be one of the four winning sculptures exhibited at Oxford.

Zimbabwe, which means “House of Stone”, draws its identity from the great ruins of Zimbabwe, an iron city of 1,800 acres built with stones cut with precision stacked without mortar. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The country of southern Africa has long used stone sculpture as a form of narration to immortalize history. The profession survived almost a century of colonial reign which sought to erase local traditions, religion and art forms.

He prospered in the international place. Thousands of pieces have been looted from Africa. Some later became repatriation campaign subjects. Others have become popular with tourists and collectors. A permanent collection of 20 Zimbabwean stone sculptures is presented in a pedestrian tunnel at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, one of the busiest in the world.

At its peak after independence, the Zimbabwe stone sculptures industry prospered, local white farmers buying rooms for their homes and facilitating international sales.

“Customers were everywhere. They would pay in advance and I have always had a line of customers, ”recalls Tafadzwa Tandi, a 45 -year -old sculptor whose work will appear in the exhibition of Oxford.

However, the industry has had trouble in the past two decades.

The global image of Zimbabwe suffered after controversial land reforms more than two decades moved more than 4,000 white farmers to redistribute land to around 300,000 black families, according to government figures. The late leader Robert Mugabe defended reforms as necessary to treat the inequalities of the colonial era, but they had involuntary economic consequences.

“Many of our customers were friends of farmers. This is where the problem comes from, “said Tendai Gwaravaza, president of Chitungwiza Arts Center.

In the center, the noise of the crushers filled the air while the sculpted sculptors. Hundreds of finished pieces, ranging from small sculptures to life -size sculptures, waited for buyers.

“The only solution now is to go out on the markets ourselves. If we don’t, no one will do it,” said Gwaravaza.

The Oxford exhibition represents such an opportunity for exposure, he said.

It is an original idea of ​​the Oxford Zimbabwe Arts Partnership, trained in response to the “Rhodes Must Fall” campaign during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the United States

The group, made up of Zimbabwean artists, a former student of Oxford and an African history teacher, initially envisaged a wider project entitled “Oxford and Rhodes: past, present and future”. It included the statue of Rhodes in glass, the installation of 100 life -size bronze statues of African liberation fighters and creating collaborative sculpture using recycled materials to represent the future.

However, the project required around 200,000 pounds, far beyond the available resources. Finally, the Oriel College provided 10,000 pounds for exposure on a scale.

“I still hope that one day could happen, but for the moment, we have just accepted something very small to start and do something,” said Richard Pantlin, the former Oxford former and the co-founder of Ozap.