Vashandi Vehurumende (Government Workers)includes, in its possible variation, 25, 41 or 61 sculptures standing individually on a tall, thin, metal stand. Together, the grouping presents as one dynamic installation, allowing viewers to walk around the whole, but not in between the works. The arrangement suggests a governmental structure: the leader being always visible, but out of reach.

Each sculpture has at its starting point a stone head carved from opal, cobalt, butter jade, serpentine, white marble, verdite, epidote, or springstone, and the receiver of a rotary phone dating from the 1950s to the 1970s, a time before Zimbabwe gained its independence and was still known as Rhodesia. The combination of stone and outdated communication tools may lead into a discussion on the complicated relationship of two histories that make up current-day Zimbabwe; and may be broadened to bring into light global ecological questions surrounding the discarding of obsolete technology, and the trend of fading traditions at the hands of capitalism; or the conversation may obsess with the seamlessness, the finesse, the intricacy and sturdiness of each sculpture.

Pesvedzero Isingazivikanwe / Influence of the Unknown, 2023

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 space 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.” – 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.

In making his sculptures, Musekiwa reflects on his process as similar to one shaping our identities. Our DNA is innately encoded, functioning in parallel with the ceaseless information barraging us through the electric veins of technology, molding our opinions, convincing and shifting our logic. So too, the artist’s hands are programmed by decades of stone carving tradition, movements, methods, and beliefs his brain no longer controls. Then, by transforming each man-made object, transplanting it out of its prior use, Musekiwa adopts the outer language of these materials, using it to endow each sculpture with specificity and personality. What we believe controls our behaviors.

And, beyond the hard labor of working with stone, metals and plastics; beyond the traditional philosophy and historical reference always close to his lips; there is a playfulness that surprises and delights: nitrous oxide canisters turned into hair, a denture smile brushed in gold leaf, and shoulders becoming from a 19th century wooden yoke. As much as historical events known and unknown have shaped our incoming future; so does the experience of seeing constantly shape our present. In Bucharest, on a winter’s night…

Kubuda mudope, 2020 - 2021

Kubuda mudope translates to Out of the mud.

The series began in 2020 with Who Is Next, the first paddle work with which Musekiwa attempted to articulate the sentiment of fear and instability felt in his community and shared globally. From it was born the 2021 series Kubuda mudope, which translates to out of the mud.

Adorned with cut number plates, a sublet reference to identity cards, Musekiwa presents portraits of people, who, despite the odds weighed against them, continue to strive. One tempting reading of these works is that Musekiwa is rising monuments to the existential resilience demonstrated by the most vulnerable individuals and nations as the pandemic continues to bulldoze their already threadbare stability. But, there is pride and a sense of success within these bodies; a hope that transcends the virus, the economic hardship, and governmental mismanagement that has exacerbated food insecurity and access to aid.

“When you are stuck in something, there is an opportunity that happens in getting out of it. It can be through belief, or through hard work, or just the simple passage of time. From 2020 when I first started working with them, I’ve been digging myself out of the mud. It’s a personal journey, but it’s parallel to a global movement.

This is a time when we are all coming out of the mud. Me personally, but also so many people around the world. The pandemic turned our lives around, but step by step we are emerging, we are succeeding.

The vaccine is a solution to the pandemic, a way out of the mud. It’s an idiom. There are many interpretations for these works. This sense of a process before we are clean of something is a state we encounter often in life.”

- Terrence Musekiwa

Telephones, 2018-2022

With these carved stone and phone receiver works, Musekiwa speaks to the complicated relationship of two histories that make up current-day Zimbabwe. The methods and tools Musekiwa uses to carve stone are directly linked to the passed down traditional practices that are still at the core of Shona culture. The phones date back to the early 1960s, directly referencing Zimbabwe’s colonial past as Rhodesia. By combining the two elements, Musekiwa invokes the internal duality of today’s Zimbabwean identity, and continues adding elements and materials offering each character deeper specificity and personality. Each series grows from the last, together bringing to life a short history of Zimbabwe’s past few years.

Generations of Unrest, 2020 -2022

Zimbabweans were also were conscripted into fighting and supporting Britain during WWII. Dubbed the Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR), the ranks were recruited using sophisticated propaganda tactics upon the Black population. Musekiwa’s humanoid sculptures, Generations of Unrest, form a diagonal line across the center of the booth. Their stone faces express cynicism and unhinged comedy – while visibly Zimbabwean, the artist carves them from white marble sourced in the United Kingdom. The figures address the psychological effects of indoctrination and war. Their bodies are formed from repurposed British artillery shells dating 1904 through 1970, signaling RAR’s coerced and compliant participation in colonial military efforts from WWI through to Chimurenga (The Rhodesian Bush War that led to Zimbabwe’s independence from England).

Puerto Rico, 2019

Where is Home? highlights a land ridden with political, environmental, and economic challenges, yet simultaneously upheld by the rich culture and social fabric of its thriving Latino community. An American colony plucked from its Caribbean roots, its contemporary context is not unlike other post-colonialist territories and nations around the world. Musekiwa reflects on San Juan as an echo of the many cities around the world where endemic corruption, unfettered gentrification, and short-term profits have left havoc in their wake.