Chiko Chazunguza, a Zimbabwean native, is the the mastermind behind a collection of culturally-driven mixed media pieces.
The Ottawa School of Arts opened a new exhibition last week titled 3 Timensional (Sekunge).
Having only recently moved to Canada, Chazunguza says he is excited to bring a new artistic language into the Ottawa arts community.
The title of the exhibition is a term coined by the artist to offer viewers insight into his idea of dimension and time. He explained that the series’ purpose is to make people conscious of the consumer culture that they partake in everyday.
“I wanted to investigate the struggle that people have to go through because of their systematized way of life wherein control becomes a basic commodity that they feel they must have,” Chazunguza said.
Chazunguza drew comparisons between his work and the process of waiting in lines at the local supermarket or Starbucks.
“Being in a lineup dehumanizes you and puts you in a vulnerable position where you don’t have a choice but to wait,” the artist explained.
Chazunguza said that by attaching the Shona phrase ‘sekunge’— which translates to ‘as if’— to this title, the context changes dramatically. “People often say ‘as if that happened’ or ‘as if things are like this.’ But to make it concrete I had to show that ‘as if’ is decided by time and space.”
The artist attributes the number three in his title to the “three distinct phases in his life,” that refer to when he lived in Bulgaria, Zimbabwe, and Canada.
The first revolved around the experiences with the social, political, and economic crises he encountered in Bulgaria during the fall of communism.
Then, at the turn of the century, the artist moved back to his native land where he saw similar changes happening, this time due to scarcity.
Upon moving to Canada, he felt a different state of abandonment, one wherein everything is available to the consumer and yet no one appreciates it as they are more focused on what they need next.
Chazunguza says that he would not have been able to create the kind of Canadian mixed media artwork in Zimbabwe due to its recycling lifestyle. “Normally, in Zimbabwe, the materials that you see in my artwork are reused as everyday objects,” he said.
He said he enjoys working with this multi-material art style because it reminds him of growing up in a ghetto. “In those places, everything is an improvisation,” Chazunguza said. “Even waking up and looking at your neighbour’s house is a salvaged work. Things like cardboard, zinc metal and plastic pipes become valuable materials.”
The artist was originally trained as a printmaker, and attributes much of his successes to his affinity with misregistration, which is the effect seen in areas that overlap and bleed out in screen-printing.
He explains that this concept of overlapped styles is even more evident in his artwork, as the three different communities layer together to paint a vivid image of a critique of global cultures.
“Working with time and space in an artistic setting brings a new dimension into the discussion and I think people will enjoy seeing the result of that as much as I have.”
3 Timensional (Sekunge) will be at Shenkman Arts Centre until April 21.
