Curators take contemporary Mozambican art to Norway and back

 She then emphasised the importance of literature, music and the arts in Norwegian culture, indicating that one of her embassy’s priorities has been, over the years, to encourage cultural exchanges with Zimbabwe, and to support the arts.
This unusual exhibition, combining photography, video, painting, installation and drawing, was co-curated by three attractive and articulate young women, Bisi Silva from Nigeria, and Marianne Hultmann and Daniella Dijk-Wennberg, who both live and work in Norway. The port city of Maputo, where the decaying gentility of a colonial past contrasts with the vibrant, multi-cultural society of today, is brought to life by the creations of seven very different artists.

“Very few Norwegians know anything about Africa’, said Hultmann, in her opening address. But after the exhibition travelled the length and breadth of Norway, over a period of two years, this is surely no longer the case. Zimbabwe was the first port of call in Africa for Maputo, a Tale of One City, from whence it will travel to Mozambique. All the exhibiting artists have a close connection with Mozambique, illustrated by their work in a variety of styles expressing diverse traditions and cultural contexts. 
 Although Bulawayo-born Berry Bickle lives and works in Maputo, Zimbabwe will always claim her as a national treasure. Her work focuses on cross-cultural identities, time past and time present. The photographic images entitled Unique in the World, Maputo, document a collection of elephant foetuses from the Natural History Museum in Maputo, showing the different stages of the 22-month pregnancy. The collection dates back to the tragic culling in 1910 of 2000 elephants, supposedly to clear a large area for agriculture just outside Maputo (then known as Lourenco Marques).
 Lourenco Dinis Pinto lives and works in Maputo, the city of his birth. He focuses on everyday life, the minutiae of his drawings of human situations reminiscent not only of Picasso’s Guernica, but also of many studies by the Zimbabwean artist, Thakor Patel. In his charcoal drawings entitled Explosions of Malhazine, Dinis documents a series of explosions in The Armory, which was built near a residential area to house rockets and grenades left over from the civil war. Grenade shrapnel landed 12 km away in Matula, and almost 100 people were killed. The first of Dinis’ drawings shows a woman clutching an armful of rockets and grenades.
 Pompilio Gemuce, born in Quelimane in the 60s, studied in the Ukraine and in France. His oil on canvas series of paintings with swings is a striking feature of the exhibition. His subjects, a grandmother and her granddaughter, a female enveloped in a burkha, an avuncular figure, and a pair of angels, swing back and forth in a sky of celestial blue, softened by delicate cloud formations. Gemuce would like us to believe that no one, including himself, is without prejudice, while his work swings between Africa and Europe, between them and us.
 Nigerian photographic artist Emeka Okereke brings to life the sights and sounds of Maputo Bay, in his Bagamoyo series. Focusing on the ferryboat Bagamoyo, which transports goods, people and vehicles between Maputo and Catembe, he shows the diverse cultures and activities of the passengers moving back and forth between the mainland and the island.
 The history of Mozambican art continues to evolve and by the time this exhibition arrives in Maputo, after its long journey through Norway, the seven artists will already have moved on in the context of their personal stories and cultural heritage. For the three curators Silva, Hultmann and Dijk-Wennberg, the adventure is far from over – it is just beginning.