Tengenenge is a community of artists and their families located in the
Guruve District
Guruve is one of several districts in the Mashonaland Central province of Zimbabwe. The district capital is the town of Guruve
Guruve is a village and centre of Guruve District, Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe ...
of
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozam ...
. It has achieved international recognition because of the large number of sculptors who have lived and worked there since 1966. These include
Fanizani Akuda,
Bernard Matemera
Bernard Matemera (14 January 1946 – 4 March 2002) was a Zimbabwean sculptor. The sculptural movement of which he was part is usually referred to as "Shona sculpture" (see Shona art and Art of Zimbabwe), although some of its recognised members ...
,
Sylvester Mubayi
Sylvester Mubayi (1942 – 13 December 2022) was a Zimbabwean sculptor.
Early life and education
Sylvester Mubayi was born in 1942 in the Chihota Reserve near Marondera, Zimbabwe, the sixth child in a family of nine. He left school aged sixteen a ...
,
Henry Munyaradzi
Henry Munyaradzi, also known as Henry Munyaradzi Mudzengerere, (1931 – 27 February 1998) was a Zimbabwean sculptor. The sculptural movement of which he was part is usually referred to as "Shona sculpture" (see Shona art and Art of Zimbabwe) ...
and
Bernard Takawira
Bernard Takawira (1948–1997) was a Zimbabwean sculptor, the younger brother of John Takawira and older brother of Lazarus Takawira.
Takawira was born in the mountainous Nyanga district, third of six children. Their father was often absent for ...
.
Establishment of the sculpture community
The Tengenenge Sculpture Community was established by Tom Blomefield in 1966. He owned what had originally been a tobacco farm and
chromium
Chromium is a chemical element with the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in group 6. It is a steely-grey, lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal.
Chromium metal is valued for its high corrosion resistance and hardne ...
mine but found that it was by then uneconomic owing to the international sanctions against Rhodesia's white government led by Ian Smith, who had declared
Unilateral Declaration of Independence
A unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) is a formal process leading to the establishment of a new state by a subnational entity which declares itself independent and sovereign without a formal agreement with the state which it is secedi ...
in 1965. Blomefield wrote that he sought an alternative source of income for his workforce, which materialized when the sculptor
Crispen Chakanyuka visited and pointed out that the farm contained an outcrop of hard
serpentine stone (part of the
Great Dyke
The Great Dyke is a linear geological feature that trends nearly north-south through the centre of Zimbabwe passing just to the west of the capital, Harare. It consists of a band of short, narrow ridges and hills spanning for approximately . The ...
) which Blomfield obtained the rights to mine to use for sculpture. Appropriately, Tengenenge means "The Beginning of the Beginning" in the local
Korekore dialect of the
Shona
Shona often refers to:
* Shona people, a Southern African people
* Shona language, a Bantu language spoken by Shona people today
Shona may also refer to:
* ''Shona'' (album), 1994 album by New Zealand singer Shona Laing
* Shona (given name)
* S ...
language. The works from the "first generation" of sculptors at Tengenenge joined those which had been created by others who worked at the
National Gallery of Rhodesia in
Salisbury
Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath.
Salisbury is in the southeast of Wil ...
, where the then director,
Frank McEwen
Francis Jack McEwen, OBE (19 April 1907 – 15 January 1994) was an English artist, teacher, and museum administrator. He is best remembered today for his efforts to bring attention to the work of Shona artists in Rhodesia, and for helping ...
organized exhibitions both nationally and internationally. This created a
group of artists whose output was sought after by collectors and which made the names of many, including Fanizani Akuda, Amali Malola, Bernard Matemera, Leman Moses, Sylvester Mubayi, Henry Munyaradzi and Bernard Takawira who had spent time at Tengenenge.
McEwen and Blomefield diverged in their opinion about how the growing local sculpture movement should evolve. Blomefield encouraged many individual artists from a number of countries including
Angola
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,
Malawi
Malawi (; or aláwi Tumbuka: ''Malaŵi''), officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeast ...
and
Mozambique
Mozambique (), officially the Republic of Mozambique ( pt, Moçambique or , ; ny, Mozambiki; sw, Msumbiji; ts, Muzambhiki), is a country located in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi ...
to join the local community of mainly Shona ethnicity and was unconcerned whether they had formal training. McEwen had a narrower vision and set up a workshop school at the National Gallery to train those he favoured. Tensions between the two grew until McEwen was deported from Rhodesia by the white minority government in 1973, ironically for "daring to empower blacks".
Later developments
In 1973, Blomefield sold his farm and moved to Harare, although the community at Tengenenge continued to produce sculptures. By 1979 the countryside there was occupied by those fighting for independence in the
guerilla war and most of the artists had gone. In December 1979 the
Lancaster House Agreement
The Lancaster House Agreement, signed on 21 December 1979, declared a ceasefire, ending the Rhodesian Bush War; and directly led to Rhodesia achieving internationally recognised independence as Zimbabwe. It required the full resumption of d ...
was signed allowing the country to achieve internationally recognised independence in 1980. The artists' community slowly re-formed especially after Blomefield returned in 1985, which encouraged others to do the same. In 1989, the accessibility for visitors to Tengenenge improved with the opening of a tar road and in that year a number of international exhibitions of the sculptors' work were organised, including one in Europe: ''Beelden op de Berg'' in
Wageningen
Wageningen () is a municipality and a historic city in the central Netherlands, in the province of Gelderland. It is famous for Wageningen University, which specialises in life sciences. The municipality had a population of in , of which many t ...
, the Netherlands.
In 1998, a video about Tengenenge was produced which led a reviewer to comment that
"Tengenenge's strongest feature is the honesty with which it faces the controversial issue of the quality of the work made at the site. This point of contention is by no means limited to that community, but it is particularly extreme because of the large number of people who work there."
By 2000, up to 300 artists had lived at Tengenenge at various times but some visitors were critical of the insanitary conditions and lack of education for workers' children.
Others, including
Celia Winter-Irving
Celia Winter-Irving (1941 – 26 July 2009), was an Australian-born, Zimbabwean-based artist and art critic who wrote extensively on Zimbabwean art, especially Shona sculpture, when she lived in Harare from 1987 to 2008 .
Early life
Celia Win ...
, who had spent several months living at Tengenenge and wrote extensively about the sculpture and the artists was much more supportive, believing
that
" lomefields mentorship had little sense of the paternalism of white supremacy....nor has he imposed his European way of life and its values upon the artists."
Blomefield continued in his role as director of Tengenenge until 2007, when he was succeeded by
Dominic Benhura
Dominic Benhura (born 1968) is a Zimbabwean sculptor.
Benhura was born in Murewa, to the northeast of arare His father died before his birth, and he was raised by his mother. As he was an excellent student, it was suggested that he be sent t ...
who is also a well-known sculptor. In 2011, a management team of five artists was formed. Other artists who have worked at Tengenenge include
Square Chikwanda,
Sanwell Chirume
Sanwell Chirume (6 August 1941) is a Zimbabwean sculptor. His work, though derived to an extent from that of the Shona people, is highly personal in nature. Chirume lives and works at the Tengenenge Sculpture Community — his artistic outp ...
,
Edward Chiwawa,
Barankinya Gosta
Barankinya Gosta (1935–1998) was a prominent Zimbabwean Chewa sculptor.
A native of Mozambique, Barankinya Gosta was a resident of Zimbabwe's renowned Tengenenge Sculpture Community. He worked primarily in wood, which he painted; his style ...
,
Makina Kameya and
Jonathan Mhondorohuma.
Tom Blomefield died on 8 April 2020, aged 95, in the Netherlands; his ashes were buried at Tengenenge on 6 December 2020.
Current status
Although art sales sustained over 1200 community members at the height of Tengenenge's success, by 2020 Zimbabwe's lengthy economic hardship had taken its toll. The tourist industry had virtually collapsed and new opportunities were scarce.
See also
*
Sculpture of Zimbabwe
Sculpture and in particular stone sculpture is an art for which Zimbabwe is well known around the world.
Origins
Central Zimbabwe contains the "Great Dyke" – a source of serpentine rocks of many types including a hard variety locally called ...
References
Further reading
* Harrie Leyten. ''Tengenenge'', Drukkerij Bakker/M.C. Escher Foundation, 1994,
* Celia Winter-Irving. ''Tengenene Art Sculpture and Paintings'', World Art Foundation, Eerbeek, The Netherlands, 2001,
* Celia Winter-Irving. ''Soottie the cat at Tengenenge'', Tengenenge (Pvt) Ltd, Graniteside, Harare, 2001,
* Christine Scherer. ''Working on the Small Difference: Notes on the Making of Sculpture in Tengenenge, Zimbabwe'', pp. 180–206 in "African Art and Agency in the Workshop", Indiana University Press, 2013,
* Tom Blomefield. ''Stone rich in Africa'', Kindle edition, Amazon media, 2016,
External links
Tengenenge Art Community Website* {{cite web , url=https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tengenenge , title=Videos taken at Tengenenge (YouTube)
Populated places in Mashonaland Central Province
Zimbabwean sculpture