In addition, the field of Occidental art discourse has a history of omitting African women from their traditional social positions as creators and sources of our visual culture.
Their influential traditional roles as creators, educators and governors of our culture has further been subsumed by urbanisation, cultural dislocation and the adaption of foreign cultures and ideals in the name of PRE AND POST colonial progress.
Thus it has been ingrained in our mental associations to relate the African woman artists with only the minor arts of pottery, basketry batiks, and beadwork.
This Western anomaly denied the African women artists a contemporary identity; belittled their intelligence and undermined their creative abilities and philosophies.
After years of being systematically excluded from the discourse of art and culture and prevented from practising their art in public spaces, let alone enjoying the prestige and ownership of their ideas and aspirations, a number of Africa women artists are today asserting their concerns and convictions through the medium of visual art
It is also refreshing to note that a comparative number of indigenous Zimbabwean women artists have acquired post-graduate art education and technical experience in Occidental universities and are addressing post-colonial African and global socio-cultural and political issues in their visual discourse.
Zimbabwe’s de-colonisation spawned new planes of expectations, and encouraged more demands for the redefinition of the scope of the permissible and sought-after in cultural imagery, through its expression and administration.
In this socio-cultural matrix, Zimbabwean women artists were almost always in the forefront of artistic innovation.
Although economically, contemporary Zimbabwean women artists may gain a livelihood from their artistic activities, many had not gained social or professional recognition until the mid-1990s, while others became only visible post-2000, in the new millennium. 🔗 Read Full Article
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