Tengenenge. . - film/video - video recording review

African Arts, Autumn, 2001 by Jonathan Zilberg

TENGENENGE Produced by Carola and Torben Rasmussen

Mango Productions, Aabenraa, Denmark, 1998. Color video, 24 min. $25.

This is the first video on Zimbabwean stone sculpture to focus exclusively on the multiethnic community of sculptors at Tengenenge village in northeastern Zimbabwe, about 150 kilometers north of Harare. Carola and Torben Rasmussen, with financial support from the Danish Development Agency (DANIDA), present an excellent if brief introduction to the history of this fascinating "art colony." Those interested in contemporary African art will find this production particularly revealing in the way it alerts them to the significant yet underrecognized place Tengenenge holds in the history of what is generically known as Shona sculpture.

In much of the literature on contemporary African art, Zimbabwean stone sculpture has been described as a uniquely Shona tradition. This view was largely established in African Arts in its earliest issues through the influential articles on the subject by Frank McEwen, the first director of the Rhodes National Gallery (now the National Gallery of Zimbabwe); by Claire Polakoff's laudatory review of the exhibition at the Musee Rodin in 1969-70; and by John Povey's supportive commentaries in his "First Word" essays, wherein he often compared Shona sculpture to Inuit sculpture. In many of these contexts the diversity of the artists' religious, ethnic, educational, and professional backgrounds, as well as their commercial motives, was dramatically downplayed and homogenized, and the assumed mythical content of the works emphasized. Tengenenge serves as a counterhistory to the inventive and reductive framing of Shona sculpture as a modern "tribal" art revival.

From both an anthropological and art historical perspective, perhaps the two most important features of this video are, first, the way it brings the Cewa Nyau masquerades into dynamic though necessarily tentative relation with the stone sculpture; and, second, the examples it provides of works from the 1960s which show little-known iconographic and stylistic treatments--works of stark originality which stand out in dramatic contrast to the largely predictable modernist-looking examples with which many readers of African Arts will be familiar. Such materials point to all manner of diversities in the larger tradition: to little-explored relations between stone sculpture and various local and translocal traditions, to the problem of overdetermining symbolic meanings in the artists' works, and to the inevitably contentious debate over aesthetic integrity and repetition in Zimbabwean stone sculpture.

Perhaps of more interest to art historians than anthropologists is the critical issue of "quality" and the art/craft or high-art/souvenir boundary. As always it will be sure to raise spirited debate about how to separate the "good" from the "bad," or as Frank McEwen, John Povey, and the British art critic Michael Shepherd have put it, how those with "impeccable taste" can distinguish the "art" from the "rubbish" and rescue the larger tradition from the dreaded specter of "airport art" (a term invented by McEwen alongside the very term Shona sculpture) and "fake" Shona sculpture. Tengenenge forthrightly brings some of the more problematic and controversial aspects of the history of Zimbabwean stone sculpture into the larger world of African art history. Moreover, it effectively allows some of the artists and major actors, including Tom Blomefield, the founder of Tengenenge, as well as dealers and tourists, to speak for themselves about the abovementioned issues. (1)

The video brings into the public sphere personal memories of the animosity between Frank McEwen and Tom Blomefield. The struggles within such art worlds are rarely alluded to in scholarly contexts. Opening this Pandora's box, Tengenenge manages nevertheless to bring honor to both these key figures in the history of Zimbabwean stone sculpture, conveying vital information about the conflict while keeping it within the bounds of civility. This productive and respectful tension engages the viewer and highlights issues of European involvement in the genesis of such schools of African art. In this regard, the connection between Tengenenge and McEwen through Joram Mariga (the "Father of Shona sculpture") via his nephew Crispen Chakanyoka is a delight to witness. Such scenes in which artists recount their early interactions with Blomefield are a testament to a remarkable chapter in the history of race relations in Zimbabwe.

Tengenenge succeeds in highlighting the importance of Tom Blomefield as a kind of patron saint for the Tengenenge artists--though the larger significance of Blomefield and his community to the history of Zimbabwean stone sculpture is not as directly addressed and developed as it might have been. In addition to showing artists giving homage to Blomefield as "father, uncle, and mother," the video effectively conveys the context in which art is produced and encountered there. The excellent interwoven footage of the environment and local musical, ritual, and performance arts, of artists at home and at work, and of the range of sculpture on display conveys the visual and emotional experience which makes Tengenenge unique. The beauty of the Zimbabwean landscape--so far from the sterility of the usual gallery settings for these sculptures--leaves the viewer slightly stunned.