Award winning artist Tawanda Takura’s exhibition reminds one that indeed it is not yet Uhuru in post colonial Africa

Rabbit Hole runs deep which uses discarded objects, mostly shoe, is on at The Bag factory Artist Studios from  October 5, 2024 to November 8, 2024.

By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor

The first thing that you will notice and that will strike all your senses in a powerful and yet calm fashion is the materiality of his exhibition –the use of discarded shoes that were once a prod possession of someone somewhere  in homes of people in the sprawling working class township of Mbare, Harare. Then you will notice quickly, in a revelation sort of way, the sculptural forms that emerged out of these assembled shoes. It does not take one much time and concentration to see that these shoes are no longer discarded shoes, but carefully assembled materials that have figures of animal, such as goats and cows.

And if you give your mind to wander enough around these objects that are animals, but not really animals, you might even see that these figures represent human beings, that could be leaders in power in Africa.

Welcome to Rabbit Hole runs deep, Tawanda Takura’s solo exhibition Rabbit Hole runs deep, that is currently on at the Bag Factory in Johannesburg, having opened on Thursday, September 3, 2024. The exhibition is a result of the work he has been creating in the last 12 weeks in Johannesburg as this year’s winner of the prestigious  pan African award for visual art Cassirer Welz Award. By winning 5his award, the Zimbabwean artist joins an impressive list of previous award winners, whose careers have shot to the roof ever since4, such as Blessing Ngobeni, DuduBloom More, Levy Pooe and Richard Specs Ndimande. The award ceremony has since been extended to the rest of the African continent, just like several awards that have been launched in this country, such as the Latitudes Award  for female artists, ABSA  L’Atelier and the FNB Art prize for example.

Rabbit Hole runs, therefore is a significant solo exhibition in that just like its predecessors it is likely to propel Takura into a visual art orbit that will magnify his visual voice internationally. This exhibition is not just about shoes that have been assembled together in a thoughtless fashion however. The art pieces on display tell rich stories about contemporary life in his country. There is subtle commentary about political leaders in Africa and how once they get into power, having toppled former colonisers, they themselves get caught up in the risks that come with unfettered power in the absence of genuine democratic space.

“I think that after fighting, after the violence is part of fighting for liberation, there was supposed to be rehabilitation, a healing process from the trauma. I feel that that has not happened in Africa,” he explained to an audience of invited guests at the opening.

The use of shoes to create these stunning art work that actually engage with the audience, was as a result of an organic process for the artist. Before he became an artist, he used to fix worn out shoes for residents of Mbare. As he went on about fixing those shoes, he eventually saw stories in those shoes, and he therefore turned to art as a medium of telling such stories.

“I ended up with a lot of shoes in my backyard in Mbare, and decided that there must be another use for these shoes. This is because these shoes have stories about the people who wore them. These shoes have their owner’s stories, their DNA is actually embedded in them, literally. These shoes in fact are an extension of the people who wore them I saw that I could work with these shoes to tell stories. In fact it is better to work with an extension of a person instead of the person themselves,” he explained.

“Bag Factory is pleased to present Rabbit hole runs deep, a solo exhibition by Tawanda Takura, comprising mixed-media, found object sculpture and painting. In his first solo presentation in South Africa, this year’s Cassirer Welz Award winner, explores the complex co-existence of

dualities like freedom and dependence; novelty and recurrence; destiny and accountability;

disillusionment and hope; the self and the collective; censorship and expression; memory and healing.

Central to Takura’s work is a critique on social hierarchy: he laments the unkept promise of

freedom post-independence, which has instead given way to corruption and stagnation. Rabbit hole runs deep reveals the artist’s disenchanted thought spiral about the realities of contemporary Zimbabwe, reflecting on the ways in which socio-political dynamics continue to exert a profoundinfluence on personal and collective identities, rendering both true liberty and full agency elusive,”  the curators of the exhibition state.

“Everything is in the air. You can’t be building castles in the air because there’s no certainty… Anything can happen. I am questioning this notion: I want to understand, what does it mean to be free? Which unit of measure are we referencing to? How can one celebrate freedom when one is still captive?

Should I call it the trick? It’s not a trick. But it is some kind of brainwash ideology that we

have imposed on ourselves. When you go through a tumultuous time like Apartheid, like

Chimurenga in my country, before independence is established, before anything else, there

has to be that rehabilitation and cleansing ritual for resetting and reconditioning the mind.

Spiritually and physically. When you go to war, when you engage in such a terrible ordeal,

you are forced to deny yourself and become something else in order to combat your

opponents. You have to be a thief to catch a thief. And then after the battle is done, you

are supposed to be integrated back into the community, you have to find yourself and

become human again. It’s shape-shifting.

And somehow I feel it’s a process that was skipped, so we suffer the residue of what

happened because that trauma, that situation, it still lingers in our leaders. When you

engage some war liberators from my community, you can sense the unresolved aura:

aggression and self-disconnection. I feel as though it is a cry for help,” Takura boldly elaborates.

Takura’s practice imbues these ponderings on social hierarchy with spiritual inquiry. His recurring engagement with symbols of faith and ritual signals an ongoing search for meaning beyond the material world. For Takura, spirituality is not as an escape, but a parallel force that offers both solace and confrontation with uncomfortable truths. He says, “In order to understand the spiritual, to understand God, to understand the cosmos itself, you have to transcend religion in the first place.”

Through his choice of materials — found objects that have lived multiple lives, such as reclaimed wood, shoes and metals — he emphasises themes of recurrence and reclamation and highlights the cyclical nature of power and oppression that can seem impossible to escape. Just as these materials carry histories of their own, Takura’s works channel stories of resistance and resilience within systems that perpetuate inequality. In this new body of work, Takura explores collage painting and introduces new symbolic motifs, underscoring his evolving critique. The mute symbol appearing across various works, speaks to the silencing of dissent and suppression of voices, which are represented by the tongues of shoes, stitched together to form inanimate choirs. Handcarved

chess pieces reflect the artist’s view of individuals as trapped in a game of hierarchy, war

and strategic manipulation. Where the battle is in the mind, the battle field that is a playground for knights, kings and queens while being a graveyard for pawns.

Through its layered compositions and sharp visual metaphors, Rabbit hole runs deep critiques the failures of leadership and governance, presenting a stark but nuanced vision of a nation still grappling with its colonial legacy.

About the artist

Although so far this is Takura’s major exhibition and opportunity in his trajectory from repairing shoes to elevating the very same shoes’ status and value by telling powerful, multi-layred stories through them and the other materials that he uses such as wood and metal, he has however travelleda significant journey up to now.

Tawanda Takurahas exhibited with Village Unhu at Cape Town Art Fair (2017, 2018) and Joburg Art Fair (2018), and undertook a residency in Joburg with the South African Foundation for Contemporary Art (SAFFCA) in 2019. His work was included in a group show at the Guns & Rain Gallery in March 2019, the Cape Town Art Fair (2020), and in a two-man show with Thina Dube (2020). He has since participated in the group exhibitions Unnatural Objects and Meeting Places, a collaborative exhibition with Bag Factory (2021). In 2021 he participated in a residency with Guns & Rain and in a residency at the Nirox Sculpture Park, one after the other. He also had work showing during the Nirox Winter Exhibition, 2022.

Trained as a shoemaker, Takura takes apart and expertly re-assembles old shoes which carry the traces and biographies of their owners. Sometimes combined with other found objects and texts, these new figurations carry the subtle but persistent smell of rubber and leather. Hollow, hybrid, tortured and distorted, sometimes carnivalesque, Takura’s work comments on socio-political injustice, and often takes clear aim at what he sees as the extractive and hypocritical practices of

charismatic churches. The artist describes how, “at times, in earlier years, I was considered a madman, going around collecting old shoes… people would see a heap of shoes in my house”.

Rabbit Hole runs deep is an important social commentary exhibition that is worthy visiting and viewing as it gives audiences another way of looking at how African societies post-struggle against colonialism , have morphed into what they are right now. It indeed is Not Yet Uhuru for many in post colonial Africa to reference the iconic Letta Mbulu song that people increasingly reference when they refer to dashed dreams of the majority in Africa post freedom.  Rabbit Hole runs deep will certainly remind you of that.

.Rabbit Hole runs deep is on at October 5, 2024 to November 8, 2024, Fordsburg Artists’ Studios (trading as Bag Factory Artists’ Studios) | 10 Mahlathini Street, Newtown, Johannesburg.