RONALD MUCHATUTA

Muchatuta’s context and inspiration always the contemporary issues facing the people ofSouthern Africa (migration, identity, marginalisation and the post-colony) are not apparentthis time in this reflection on exile, faith, and the precarity of life. There seems to be adisconnect in the narratives this body of work presents, but it is a true reflection of what artcritic Valeria Geselev called ‘multiple Ronalds’¹ and the different worlds many migrantshave to live in and negotiate. Working across various mediums, focusing on illustration, andusing figurative power to explore erasure, memory, identity, leavings and displacement,Muchatuta presents intoxicatingly hypnotic work that is reflexive and palpably exuberant ina wholly unique way. The polysemic nature of the artworks offers a grammar of experienceto negotiate from the margins through the process of making and being brave enough totransform narratives. With figures suspended in animation (like the childlike feet in MaryJane and stockings taken mid-swing), this work reflects the limbo and the violence thatuncertainty and dissatisfaction bring when there appears to be no resolution. Ink andcharcoal work has been a recurrent style in Muchatuta’s work, reflecting on life, memory,and history and how the colour or absence of it has been an agent in his making andunmaking to consider where he fits in the spectrum between having a particular identityand belonging. It is here, though, that one notices that the subject of his work is perhaps nolonger a subject for rumination, for Muchatuta coalesces the history of Southern Africa withthe realisation that our history follows us everywhere, and we always find that which weknow is familiar in even the strangest places. Just as his inspiration is his particular contextand whilst still tinged with the sense of alienation, frustration, and nostalgia, these newworks derive from his encounters with various cultures and reference his Shona heritage.They aim to present his worldview through which the viewers can determine where theystand with him, and he has now been imbued with new energy and realisation that ourchoices change how we see the world. The work presents a significant fragmentation in itsrejection of a homogenised world psychologically fraught with hesitancy. Created when hehad just finished a big project, this presentation is a tribute to his roots and marks a newpath depicting his ever-expanding exploration of the ungraspable narratives that make upthe world.

1 From Barnabas Muvhuti’s Ronald Muchatuta: Tackling African Migration – AContentious Social Issue in Ronald Muchatuta at the Stellenbosch Triennale.

Press release courtesy Almine Rech, Text: Fadzai Muchemwa/