Shona Stone Sculpture – Making Music

Description

Making Music has hair and skirt detailing in ‘rough’ stone, with a highly polished face, upper body and drum.  It is a character piece showing the strength of the drum’s intoxicating rhythm and communication power; and it also reveals the beauty of the stone itself.

Shona Culture:
The Shona people of Zimbabwe have hand sculpted stone into works of art for nearly a thousand years, during which the style has continually evolved with beauty and elegance.  The contemporary, yet eternal, shape of these sculptures bring splendour to the home and compliment any decor.  The themes these sculptures portray represent esteemed values in the Shona culture of family, love, life and nature.

Stone Properties and Uniqueness:
The majority of stone used in Zimbabwean sculpture are locally sourced and belong to the geological family Serpentine.  They are sedimentary, having originally been laid down on a sandy seafloor.  Through exposure to intense heat and pressure over hundreds of millions of years has transformed them into hard and heavy stone rich in iron.  Colours range from black and green to yellows, orange, grey, red, and even purple.  Each piece is unique, both in the expression made by the sculptor’s hands and in the natural multi-coloured patterns in the rock.

Spiritual properties of the stone:
These incredible stone carvers hold firm to the belief that every stone and everything has a life spirit.  It is that ‘life spirit’ that influences what sculpture that stone will become.  Many artists believe that it is their job to “release the spirit from the stone”.

Circa – Creative Tragedy:
In 1987, Robert Mugabe became President of Zimbabwe.  He revised the Constitution and brutally eliminated any opposition.  By the early 1990’s, many artists had been either killed or fled to neighbouring South Africa.  Sadly, many of these mostly male artists contracted AIDS, and the world lost much of that generation of sculptors, artists and artisans.

This Shona sculpture was created around this time of great cultural upheaval.