Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Celia Winter Irving
3 October 2008
Harare — THE workshops at Shona Im Park in Westfalen Park in Dortmund are bringing people together in the African way, where baking bread over an open fire, sharing together ideas and stones, sheltering from rain which seemed to have lost its moorings in the sky in pole and dagga houses have become the order of the day.
It was the concern of Bastian Muller and Joachim Muller - organisers of the exhibition - to have people at the workshops experience the making of stone sculpture as they would in Zimbabwe, the smell of wood smoke in their nostrils, the taste of wood smoke in their mouths, the blowing of wood smoke through their hair.
At this workshop, the Zimbabwean sculptors laid down their tools to respect their students who quickly wrested from their stones images of women, of cats, of lovers in one stone.
A sizeable chunk of the experience demanded by the students was the experience of Africa, the sense of belonging to another through the shared experience or ritual.
Hence the bread baking, the putting of a group of children together, some orphaned, some of single parents, some of same sex parents, some of father and step mother, some of mother and stepfather, together to make stone sculptures of cats.
For some came ears first, for others tails first, and others, whiskers first drawn in the stone.
One male parent said disarmingly "this one is mine from my former partner and that one is hers from one of her former partners and that one is actually ours".
As the smoke wafted, so did mbira music and the hint of a drum.
There were the kids from the Rainbow School above the park a school for kids from the many varieties of dysfunctional families in Germany who when they came to school could get away from the hurling the china into a fantasy world. So they made forests where wizards let out from their cupboards lived alongside birds and 'imaginary' animals.
Covering this forest was a Heaven with cotton wool clouds and diving blue and black birds.
On walls there were witcheswith broomsticks down beside them and on the floor boxes with furry toys a free for all.
These kids came to the workshop and took to their stones like ducks to water, carving heads, faces and cats.
Here, Bastian Muller broke bread with the rest of them and ate his sadza as naturally as he would in Zimbabwe where each year he comes to discover what he feels is good in sculpture.
To Muller, it's not how good the sculptor is said to be, by buyers, agents, galleryists or writers, its how good the sculpture appears to him.
The workshop to him was as much the creating of a setting for the making of sculpture as a situation where people learned how to make sculpture.
The bread, the wood smoke, the pole and dagga houses the sense of Tengenenge in the air were as important to him as the actual tuition of the students, and the sculptures they produced.
The workshops had observers those who strolled the park, a pair of elegant German businessmen with raincoats flung the right angles over their shoulders and their jeaned and carefully layered girl friends old women forcing their legs to walk the distance of the park, knowing and looking for every chair, every seat, every resting place.
As they would precious stones these people turned raw stones upside down and on their sides. It is spaces like Westfalen Park which drag people our of their warm apartments into the storm and wind so as to raise their hair from the crowns of their heads.
During the time of the exhibition, they could walk the park, feed the ducks as they would in a London park, see the stone sculptures as much symbols of African traditions and truths as the African way of like, and ride a choo choo train around the park bouncing their kids like rubber balls on their knees.
They could also bake their bread, get covered in wood smoke, learn the basics of stone sculpture and have as truly an African experience as there is to be had in Germany.
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