Murals speak love, beauty, joy
PATIENCE MUSA
Motorists and those walking on foot stop at Matapi flats in Mbare for a while to admire the vivacious and colourful art pieces on some of the hostel walls, thanks to Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA), which in 2010 rolled out a murals project in the area.
Compared to the filthy, chaos and disarray around the hostels in Mbare, the murals speak love, beauty and joy.
For anyone who glimpses in the mural’s direction, they communicate different messages which bring out creativity.
Some studies have linked arts and culture to equitable development too.
Today, 11 years after HIFA, which was an annual festival to showcase the very best of local, regional and international arts, kicked off the murals project in Mbare, Zimbabwe has its own mural artists including CaliGraph, a company of young artists who have been spreading some colour all over Harare’s higher density suburbs.
To say these young artists have been ‘spreading colour’ alone diminishes the work they have been doing.
The murals they have painted in Mbare, Kambuzuma, Glen Norah and Chitungwiza have been girl power pieces that have led to motorists and community members stopping a while to admire the vibrant art pieces.
With an economy like ours which doesn’t allow everyone to be able to afford pieces of art, murals give communities access removing the class-based barriers associated with our museums and galleries.
The visual aesthetics have cultural, economic and social benefits, yet we as a nation seem to see no value in that.
Murals also have health benefits-therapeutic benefits for the mentally ill and emotionally trodden.
A chat with one of the CaliGraph originators artiste, Nyasha Jeche, revealed that even though murals have been around a while in their different forms of written adverts, political graffiti and random graffiti their type is rare and yet to be accepted.
He bemoaned how the Zimbabwe art scene does not pay much but they had decided to move forward in the hope of kick-starting conversations and making communities aware of the beauty in these large-scale inspirational art pieces.
CaliGraph was founded in 2017 by Nyasha Jeche and Marcus Zvinashe; four years later the group now encompasses a great number of creatives who work together as a collective.
The group constantly collaborates with artists from Baobab Media, Skeyi & Strobo and Smart Zhet.
To date, the group has painted over a hundred murals, their first being in 2018 at the Theatre in the Park, followed by an Oliver Mtukudzi mural in 2019 and since last year they have also painted some Covid-19 awareness murals.
Currently CaliGraph is in partnership with United Nations International Children Emergency Fund, GOAL Global and Zimbabwe Idai Recovery Project.
The projects involve painting health-related murals in rural areas, a #GirlPower campaign in Harare and currently they are painting 10 inspirational women in Bulawayo in line with women’s month.
Murals overtime can become iconic, the colour spilling out not just in the immediate communities but spreading throughout the world.
A great example are some of the South African murals, Cape Town also has a whole festival dedicated to public art, The Cape Town International Public Art Festival.
It’s not just South Africa, the movement is slowly growing and spreading throughout Africa.
It would be lovely to see city councils commissioning artists to paint murals on the many city council-owned properties scattered all over the country, whose walls were last painted decades ago.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see ministries for instance the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education commissioning some murals on the walls of some schools and the corporate world joining in the fun too turning dilapidated alleys and blank walls into bursts of colour that communicate vibrant Zimbabwean stories.
