Thursday, January 26, between 7-10 PM, Catinca Tabacaru Gallery presents Zimbabwean artist Terrence Musekiwa’s third solo with the Gallery and his first exhibition in Bucharest: “Pesvedzero Isingazivikanwe/ Influence of the Unknown”
Musekiwa’s traditional approach to the toiling of stone is sourced from his ‘Chikaranga’ ancestry, passed down through his father Kennedy Musekiwa and evolved throughout his life. Bringing in contemporary methods of sculpting and assemblage, his selection of materials, everyday objects and historical artifacts follows a narrative thread. Syncretism and forms of codification play central roles, often used by Musekiwa to speak to the complex relationship between ecology, history, and current socio-political contexts.
In the Gallery’s vast industrial space in Bucharest, Musekiwa mounts 11 new sculptures whose tangle of materials opens a window into the conceptual realm of African maximalism. Many standing above human stature, they are imbued with the artist’s conviction of a tactile connection between the living and ancestral realms.
“Some things, we don’t know them… there are certain energies in our African culture that we follow because if we don’t, in the long run they will cost us” says Terrence Musekiwa.
Musekiwa’s practice stands on this intersection of the inner and outer influences which build our truths and shape our characters. The stone faces of his works, sculpted in the material of his homeland, are rooted in ancestry – his core identity; while the bodies of these works are animated with kaleidoscopic found materials – his Earthly context. Internet cables encased in plastics swirl up through Musekiwa’s metal bodies, cascading and wrapping their tendrils around the humanoid heads donning manifold expressions spanning power, pain, amusement.
Using these excess human materials, Musekiwa signals to where civilization stands in time: what we are consuming, discarding, overproducing. The debris of history is inherited; often dormant and unnamed in the collective human psyche. It can be excavated. And so, Musekiwa takes an archeological approach.
The exhibition can be visited until 01.04.2023. The entrance is free.
Location: Calea Giulesti 14, 3rd Floor, Bucharest, Romania.
Media partners: Modernism.ro, ArteVezi, Curatorial.ro, Empower Art &Artists, Zile și Nopți
