Meet Zimbabwean Sculptor Capturing Covid-19 Pandemic Through Art

David Ngwerume, who began sculpting as a teen, says the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns in Zimbabwe helped him to focus his creative energy and gave him some time out from his other career as a senior partner in a Harare law firm. One of his series of the Covid-19 themed sculptures that has taken Zimbabwean social media by storm is "Arms", depicting a woman from the waist up. She is masked and presenting her shoulder to a pair of disembodied hands for a vaccination jab. Ngwerume says vaccination is important, yet hesitancy is global. That's how he came to carve "Arms" which has probably become his signature piece during the pandemic. Zimbabwe launched its own mass vaccination campaign over two months ago. The government wants to achieve herd immunity by immunizing two-thirds of its 15 million people by the end of 2021. But so far, just over 300,000 have presented themselves for the jab. Zimbabwe has 38,086 confirmed cases, including 35,123 recoveries and 1,557 deaths.