You have to wait your turn if you want to speak to Kudzanai Chiurai these days. When I arrive at the Obert Contemporary at Melrose Arch, Johannesburg, he is being interviewed by the SABC. Next up is Reuters, who want to film him for CNN, but the crew is still waiting at the South African/Zimbabwean border for the release of the alleged mercenaries, so I am slotted in a bit earlier.
‘Celebrity,†a friend chides as he walks past the artist, who smiles meekly before turning his attention to me. Chiurai is fresh out of university and Y Propaganda is only his second serious body of work, yet he has had more media attention than most local artists dream of.
Cynics could argue that if Chiurai were a cranky, old white guy instead of a hip, black twentysomething he might not have achieved his flavour-of-the-month status, and as gallery owner Michael Obert says: ‘No one has really written about the art, they’re all writing about him.â€
But to do so would be unfair to an increasingly strong selection of multimedia paintings. And Y Propaganda is just that bit stronger than his last exhibition, The Revolution Will be Televised, which also attracted a lot of media attention and sold out on opening night.
It could be that the Zimbabwean has managed to hit a nerve that speaks to a cool, politically aware, young generation while managing an accessibility and maturity that appeals to those old enough, and rich enough, to invest in art.
Armed with lashes of oils, spray-paint, charcoal and wallpaper off-cuts, Chiurai tackles social injustice, xenophobia and press communication in a way that manages to meld street culture and the urban fizz of Jean-Michel Basquiat — whom Chiurai cites as a major influence — into a multi-layered commentary on the gritty immediacy of African politics and identity.
A talking point of his last exhibition was his use of stencils of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s head in flames. They make a reappearance in this exhibition in a work entitled Propaganda? This and another work, End the Silence — a self-portrait with a mask cut-out of the mouth area and a winged toaster with a soon-to-be singed vote — clearly speak of the political situation in the artist’s home country. Yet he has shown some reticence in commenting on Zimbabwean politics.
By way of explanation he says: ‘There has been an overpoliticising or at least overemphasis on the political [in response to the work]. That wasn’t my initial intention. It is part of it, but it was never the main part of it. [What I wanted to show] was the city and the dynamics that occur when people [from different countries and cultures] come together and are resocialised.â€
Although Chiurai says he sees the exhibition essentially as one work, his focus on xenophobia and migration come across most clearly in the triptychs Congestion and Mzanzi.
Congestion shows the inside of a coach, which becomes a symbol for how people’s lives are always in a state of flux. He has made use of stencils here again because, he says, stencils can be removed and therefore capture the dynamic of impermanence. In Mzanzi, a series of phone booths display the words ‘dismissedâ€, ‘dispersed†and ‘displaced†with an overriding grey ‘dismay†lurking over the cityscape.
Another recurring theme is that of news. In Press Freedom, Chiurai aims to show how stories and events are subjectively depicted. It shows a figure painted on top of articles from The Star and The Zimbabwean that relate to the same issues but, unsurprisingly, have very different angles — the figure then absorbs this information according to his own biases.
In an interview last year Chiurai commented: ‘Art brings a new dimension. It opens up dialogue. In Zimbabwe you can’t exhibit [politically motivated art] but you can here and other people can find out about [what is going on in Zimbabwe].†And, if nothing else, Chiurai is certainly getting tongues wagging.