By Jonathan Mbiriyamveka
Sculptor, sound and performing artist — Masimba Hwati — has landed a three-month Radio Art Residency Weimar residency for his project titled ‘Wairesi: Wartime radio meets Harare Black Market’.
The 38-year-old Hwati who is based in Vienna will work on the project using archival material from radio stations particularly those that broadcast during the war and some sound clips from The black market in Harare and the former Ximex Mall.
“For the Weimer Radio Art residency, I’m proposing an orchestra and performance of sound sculptures that respond to, and complement the corpus of raw and mediated sonic materials that I’ve been developing from wartime radio files and field recordings from the Black market in Harare, Zimbabwe,” he wrote in his proposal.
He explained further on the working title of the project: “Waresi: Is a Shona word to describe wireless radio, an adaptation and bastardization of the English phrase: Wireless radio
“Black-market: Zimbabwe has the largest illegal parallel market in Africa ranging from, foreign currency exchange, groceries, fuel, mobile data and traditional herbs and medicines. Traders on the black market are constantly involved in clashes with local and city council police who use (Chi over-over) radio to coordinate themselves while trader used pseudo-radio means to communicate from whistling, to coded language and even body language.
“I come from a tradition of found materials sculpture and DIY/Bush mechanic electronics I use these survival skills in the making of sculpture and sound in my practice. I’m fascinated by the way my ancestral Zezuru philosophy of sound and listening is quite broad and inclusive of a large field of non-audible sounds which borders on the physicality of sound and the treatment of vibration as bon fide sound.”
Hwati works across sculpture, video, performance, and sound. He holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is a Ph.D. in Art practice, candidate at the Academy of Fine Art Vienna. He is a Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture alumni class of 2019.
He studied and taught sculpture at Harare Polytechnic Art school. Collections Include University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA), Iziko, South African National Gallery. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Scott White Contemporary, San Diego, George R. Nnamdi Collection, Detroit Michigan.
National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Gervanne & Matthias Leridon Collection. In 2015 he showed at the Zimbabwean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 56th edition. He is an honorary research fellow at Rhodes University Fine Arts Department in Grahamstown, SA. Solo and group shows include Belgium. Zimbabwe, South Africa, Germany, United States, France, and Canada. Hwati is currently involved in short and long-term projects in Harare, London, Capetown and Warren Michigan where he travels back and forth.
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