Shona art suffers under Mugabe

The beautiful Shona-sculptures are a world famous Zimbabwan export product: sculpted out of a family of serpentine ore you can’t find anywhere else in the world. Depending on the processing (chiseling, rasping, sanding then polishing) the Zimbabwan serpentine changes colour and depth, which makes Shona art one the most contrasty sculpture.
Shona art declined after 2000, when president Mugabe started chasing white farmers off their land. “Before every amateur-sculptor could gain a little extra selling statues to tourists, but due to the problems in this country, the tourists stay away” says Joost Berckx of Wereldbeeld [Image of the world], who has been trading in art in Zimbabwe for twelve years. “Moreover, Mugabe put an end to all small public markets two years ago”.
The artists from Harare withdrew to private properties, where they can exhibit their sculptures. You will find quite a few around the airport. Only artists with sales abroad manage to make a living with their chisel. The others have impoverished, as the whole of the unemployed population. Sculpting today has become very expensive, because of the enormous price-rise of raw materials and fuel. Berckx: “Abrasive paper is expensive, beeswax unaffordable, tools unavailable.”
One liter of petrol costs between 150 and 200 million Zimdollars, converted this means about one to one and a half dollar. For a solitary sculptor it is near to impossible to get to the quarry, says Celia Winter-Irving, who is preparing a documentary about the world famous Tengenenge Sculpture Village, a collective of artists with a quarry nearby.
For foreign buyers it has become risky business to trade in Shona art, says Berckx. Exporting the wares out of a country amaciated by inflation and corruption is a darn daring exploit. Berckx: “Early May a container arrived for which we’d been waiting for more than two years, amongst others because the national bank used our export documents for their own container.”