Gift Muchenje
Gift Muchenje, born in 1969 in Harare. Although he never received formal artistic training, his older brother, Cosmas, introduced him to stone sculpture. After helping his brother for one year as an assistant (learning to finish and polish the works before tackling essential carving and shaping skills), he began to work in his own right in 1989.
His first sculpture portrayed a woman磗 head and he still finds great inspiration in the subject, often working quite realistically, and at other times with more abstraction and freedom. He also works with the human figure and has, more recently, carved small animals and birds. Studying the ducks at the Sculpture Park, he has come to greatly admire their peaceful and graceful movements as well as their amusing characters - all of which he attempts to describe in stone.
Ideas come to Gift in a variety of ways - sometimes from something specific that he has seen; sometimes from an imaginative image in his mind; and sometimes from a piece of stone that he is drawn to. He is very careful in the selection of his stone - attracted particularly to pieces that have a strong natural volume - mostly of a medium size. As a result his sculpture often have a full, rounded quality that has emerged completely naturally from the stone - with little influence or change from the artist. His recent Duck was inspired by the natural form of the stone and only took on the characteristics observed by the artist at a 创final stage创.
The Zimbabwean artist most admired by Gift is Nicholas Mukomberanwa; particularly for the tremendous linear quality in his work. He believes him to be very different from other sculptors and puts this down to the fact that he works in virtual solitude. He respects the powerful spirituality present in his sculpture - something he believes is lacking in much of the work produced elsewhere today.
He has ideas at the moment to tackle new themes including the 创united family创 and 创water spirit创 - a very traditional and potent image, even today, he believes it to be very important that sculpture still try to communicate the Shona beliefs but feels it is happening far less frequently, and successfully, than it used to.
Gift has worked at Chapungu since 1989 and chooses to use Lepidolite, Leopard Stone and the Green and Black varieties of Serpentine in the main. He spoke of his work recently, saying 创Things are changing from Shona art to modern beliefs and imagery. I磎 trying to mix both of them - all that is past as well as the present创.
His future ambitions include experimentation with a much larger scale and an attempt to portray more challenging and 创difficult创 imagery.
His work has been widely exhibited in Zimbabwe and recently in several overseas exhibitions.
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