Wallen Mapondera at Galerie Mitterrand
To create the wall assemblages in his solo exhibition “Chikokoko (Little Pleasures That Counts),” Harare-based artist Wallen Mapondera layered cardboard helps with scraps of kitenge cloth and newspaper. He then painted over the brand new surfaces, sanded them down, and hooked up an association of repurposed on a regular basis supplies. Colourful threads and twine-swaddled palm seeds spill from nests of tree bark, whereas pulp egg cartons pucker into honeycombs and hives. Elsewhere, tight stacks of those trays recall ribbed concrete, the fore edges of books, and even rope fiber. When flattened and blackened, they will additionally recall destruction.
In 2005, beneath the misrule of Zimbabwe’s erstwhile liberator Robert Mugabe, the federal government launched Operation Murambatsvina, a marketing campaign to “drive out the garbage” from the slums. The mass demolitions and displacements that adopted left razed streetscapes throughout Zimbabwe. The aftermath is imprinted on Mapondera’s work. For Zvanza Moyo (all works cited 2022), the artist stained a roomwide rip of salvaged tent canvas with moist cement, reduce a number of holes within the cloth, and embroidered it with shiny flakes of packaging cardboard. The swirling densities counsel maps of rerouted motion or fingerprints cleft into mismatching halves.
Mapondera sows “Little Pleasures” all through the present, bearing witness in addition to hope. The discovered Toms shoe in Some Folks Have Hopes and Desires could have first landed in Zimbabwe as a presumptuous international social-entrepreneurship ploy. But, as soon as discarded, it receives a form of clemency, purple tassels now adorning its open weave.
— Chinnie Ding
