Woza Albert

ECONOMIC and emotional instability, the disunity among Africans and the loss of sense of self are some of the symptoms of a colonial babalaas that most black people suffer from today in Africa.

Artists Ronald Muchatuta and Patrick Bongoy are addressing this monkey on the back of Africans in their exhibition, Feso A Thorn In The Flesh. Translated from Shona, Feso is a clandestine African plant which reveals itself through unexpected pain when stepping on it.

It’s known as the Devil’s Thorn because of its two distinct horn-like protrusions. Muchatuta and Congolese artist Bongoy see colonialism as an emotional feso etched in the lives of African people across the continent.

“The exhibition interrogates partly ‘Post-Colonial Theory’ using our places of origin including those of other African states , engaging with the effects of colonialism and current realities that post-colonialism has driven us to,” Zimbabwean born artist Muchatuta tells me.

“My work speaks in response to the global reality of literal and figurative environmental pollution. This encompasses the entire spectrum from the erosion of economic viability, the impact on community and individual behaviour and socio cultural decay of the rural and urban landscape,” said Bongoy of the exhibition.  Feso A Thorn In The Flesh opens this Thursday at the Ebony Gallery in Cape Town.

A multi-disciplined artist, Muchatuta has been in South Africa for more than a decade now, based in Cape Town and hasn’t been to Zim in a number of years. “The political discourse in Zimbabwe is also an African discourse. The desire for the so called ‘sweet democracy’  that we wish as Africans affects us in many ways. The militant ways in Zimbabwe are a reflection of the oppressive apartheid era only difference is that it’s the legacy of the liberation leaders that’s devouring its citizens. That militancy inspires the proactive nature of my artworks,” he tells me.

Muchatuta is a qualified Master Mosaic Artist from Spier Arts Academy in Cape Town, where he completed his studies in 2012 and primarily works through the mediums of drawing, painting and creating mosaics. Currently, three of his artwork are up in the Melrose Gallery as part of a group exhibition Reinventing Materiality.

It is at that exhibition that renowned playwright, Mbongeni Ngema saw his work and asked to use Muchatuta’s work as his album art for his upcoming album. “I respect Mbongeni for his lifelong contribution to the South African theatre and music sectors and for the valuable contribution that his productions like Sarafina! Woza Albert and Asinamali made to promote the evils of Apartheid and the struggle for freedom to massive global audiences. It means In addition that there is a creative understanding and appreciation that my work has. The narrative of the work resonates with his music and one can only understand in that context,” Muchatuta.

Works such as this are the antidote to the hangover that a number of people suffer from because not only do the artworks aesthetically turn one one, but they spur conversations which give people the opportunity to engage with who they really truly are.