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Pasinger Fabrik, exhibition view, room #1, My Object Tells |
My Object Tells |
Objects also are containers of history. Clay pots from the past may tell archaeologists a lot about the skills and life circumstances of a preceding culture. Objects have a history of their own production, also in industrial times. Additionally, objects may contain individual histories, memories that remain attached to them, even if they have become useless, damaged or broken. In My Object Tells specific objects from the 60s, 70s, 80s – a critical period of time, which still has its effects on the current situation in Zimbabwe – were photographed together with their current owners, who tell the story of their object: How and when they got it and what made them keeping it until now. My Object Tells may be read alongside with chiefly history, which the object’s own history of production and its attached personal memories also have been part of.
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My Object Tells includes 19 objects from 1964-79 and 1982-87 and their corresponding memories told by their current owners. These memories are viewed by the artist in their historic context which can be found in the second paragraph of each text. |
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Samples: |
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The Copper Necklace |
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The Casserole |
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The Fishing Weight |
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(Click on image to enlarge) |
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Pasinger Fabrik, exhibition view, room #1, Invisible Landscape |
Invisible Landscape |
Landscape plays a pivotal role in the history and perception of Zimbabwe. Landscape painting first came to Zimbabwe with the arrival of artists like Thomas Baines in the late 19th century. Later, in the 1960s it was established as a Zimbabwean art form by the founder of the first National Gallery of Rhodesia now Zimbabwe, Frank McEwen, an European artist and art historian. European landscape painting was based on an idea descending from romanticism, which tended to glorify the past and nature. In reality however this kind of idealised nature became a battlefield several times in Zimbabwean history. The Matabele wars, the First Chimurenga, the Second Chimurenga, all these liberation struggles made Zimbabwe the nation of today – an independent country that is the result of a history of violence, whose traumatic consequences continue to have an effect and influence the social situation. Therefore, the European image of nature as a peaceful refuge and innocent idyll seems to be contrasted by its contamination of violence. In the Bush War, as the Rhodesian officials called that war, nature and landscape had become a traumatic experience. Visiting former places of violence in Zimbabwe they don’t show any traces. What happened once in the past remains invisible today. Memory, however, according to the philosopher Walter Benjamin, is based on images, but not on words. Therefore, if ‘landscape’ is not identical with nature – like a map and the territory that it represents – but a pictorial interpretation, a subjective image of it, what do we perceive then when we are looking at it today knowing what once happened on the place? How does memory affect the idea of landscape and nature? The project Invisible Landscape investigates such a former place of violence in the Chimanimani Mountains in the Eastern part of Zimbabwe bordering with Mozambique. Invisible today and not identified or marked by any sign or traces, the Second Chimurenga started here in 1964, when a White driver was deadly attacked by group of freedom fighters called Crocodile Gang. There were no witnesses, apart from the involved individuals themselves, no witnesses but nature, the forest, the grass, the plants next to the road – as they still can be found there today. Some of these plants from the place in the past still can be viewed and studied; they are archived in the Herbarium of the National Botanical Gardens in Harare (which is considered by the film project Hortus Harare). These plant specimens from the natural environment next to historic location may help to reconstruct an image of the place and the conflict by offering a different kind of reading. Reading the botanical classifications and the detailed descriptions of the sites with exact geographical indications, we also learn which botanists collected the plants at that time in the wilderness – which was a war zone. That way botany interrelates with history and the plant specimen together with the images of their original locaction as viewed today may offer a different kind of narration that may contribute to the understanding of a historical conflict and its aftermath.
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The investigations for Invisible Landscape were developed in three steps. At first at the place of the attack by the Crocodile Gang in the Chimanimani Mountains. Then in the Herbarium of the National Botanic Gardens in Harare. And finally, the two botanists (Tom Muller, Harare; Darrel Plowes, Mutare) were visited and interviewed. Both botanists hadn't stopped to collect plants during the war, also close to the road where the Crocodile Gang carried an assault. Both botanists had encounters with freedom fighters in the Chimanimani Mountains. All selected and photographed plant specimen refer to the period of time of the war (1964-1979) and to those plants that were photographed (in 2015) at the roadside where the war once had started. |
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Samples: |
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"Plant Hunters" & Herbarium 2015
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Plant Specimen from the site from 1964-79 |
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Plants at the site photographed in 2015 |
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(Click on image to enlarge) |
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