found spray-can debris, plastic bottle tops and floor brush

Artwork date: 2014
Exhibited: Iziko South African National Gallery, Matereality, Cape Town, 14 February 2020 to 21 February 2021.; Wits Art Museum, When Tomorrow Comes, 16 March to 29 May, 2016.; WHATIFTHEWORLD for Joburg Art Fair as part of Gallery Special Projects, Local Foreign Products, Johannesburg, 11 to 13 September 2015.

(1)

104 x 100 x 37 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Johannesburg.

WHATIFTHEWORLD, Johannesburg.

Note:

Moffat Takadiwa, a Zimbabwean artist who is self-described as a ‘spiritual garbage man’, creates his marvelous sculptural forms using refuse materials and litter from disposals around Harare.

These alluring and colourful works hold a magical quality to them, they look playful and are deliciously tactile. They’re tempting to touch and look like candy beads from afar. As one moves closer to the work, his ingenious use of scrap objects to create art evokes his collecting of materials and collections of potential media.

Takadiwa is not only an artist, but a collector of human detritus, and an archivist of the things we discard. There are so many levels of interpretation in his work – the environmental impact of so much disposed plastic; the sociopolitical ideas presented through the discarded materials of foreign products in Zimbabwe and the lack of locally sourced, locally made, sustainable products that uplift a local economy, which is instead bound to the reliance on imported goods and inflation. There are also the ritualistic elements of the work, from the ritual of producing his ‘beads’ – collecting materials, cleaning materials, sorting materials, and selecting the objects for this particular piece. Then, there is a ritualistic aesthetic to the work – something reminiscent of the aesthetic of headdresses and masks produced by communities for spiritual practices and traditional ceremonies. The artifacts found at the ancient site of Great Zimbabwe included glass and gold beads, among other objects of significance, and these ‘beaded’ works by Takadiwa resonate with the ancient history of his home country Zimbabwe.

Mr Consumer 2 was recently exhibited in the large-scale exhibition Matereality at the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town. The exhibition highlighted how contemporary artists from the African continent are challenging traditional notions around the use of materials to produce artworks.

In 2021, Moffat Takadiwa presented Mr. Foreman you have destroyed the farm, at Semiose in Paris and Witch Craft: Re-Thinking Power at Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles. His most recent solo exhibition, Brutalized Language was hosted at Nicodim Gallery in New York.

Nicola Kritzinger