Mazarire’s hotline to God

 While most of us reluctantly render unto the authorities our tax dues, and accept that in the midst of life we are in death, there are times when we ignore our spiritual dimensions, and fail to acknowledge the ancestors or saints who have gone before us.
In comparison, however, award-winning Zimbabwean artist, Munyaradzi Mazarire, has a hotline to God.
Last week at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in the capital, the Austrian ambassador, Maria Moya Gotsch, opened Mazarire’s solo mixed media exhibition, Letter to God. Huge buff coloured envelopes, carved from wood, were astoundingly realistic, down to the postage stamps painted in oils, with official black ink date stamps. Written in an elegant flowing script, they were addressed to a variety of ancestral spirits characterised by the snake, the water spirits, the bird, the monkey and a fragment of traditional cloth.
Mazarire has an aura of otherworldliness. Quiet and unassuming, you might ask him for advice or even trust him with your innermost secrets. His art draws attention to the spiritual forces surrounding us and their ability to affect our daily existence.
Sealed within each envelope was a personal prayer or petition, perhaps giving thanks for favours received, or requesting good luck or a solution to a problem. These petitions were all the more fascinating, as they existed only in the imagination of the audience.
The address or invocation to a deity on each envelope was written in Shona. Pity the non-Shona speaker unable to understand the poetic words invoking Vana Maerera, the “holy ones who dwell under the water, who wear clean clothes, who give today’s riches, and who give today’s kind of peace”.
Fortunately for me, PSP, a well-known poet from The Book Café, translated the invocations on all the envelopes, reading them first in the poetic cadences of Shona, and then translating them into English.
The soulful monkeys peeping out of the date stamp October 27 2011 were addressed as “climbers of trees, those who eat wild foods, dwellers of mountains, those who bring the rain”.
A letter to Vana Nyamushavi, the postage stamp bearing a traditional red, black and white design, called upon “those who have the muse, the diggers, the hunters, the seekers, the king makers, the collectors of the heritage”. Who can tell what message lay within the envelope – could it be from someone who would be king, or a request from a weary chief executive officer asking for the means to relinquish his obligations?
There could be no right or wrong answer when interpreting these letters to God. The Vana Maerera might be petitioned by a student asking for a computer, while a farmer desperate for rain might beg the Vana Makwiramiti for special favours.
Art lovers gazed thoughtfully at these outsized letters to God, admiring the precision, technique and sheer imagination that went into their making. While charmed by the concept, observers remained challenged by the possibilities suggested by Mazarire’s art.
A positive response from the audience is gratifying – what more could any artist hope for, besides, perhaps, making a few sales.