Lechwe Trust Collection.

Lusaka National Museum January 27 March 17, 2005

A government cultural officer of immense proportions bedecked with gold rings, polka dots, and pinstripes puffs a Cuban cigar as he pushes his trolley of Scottish whisky, French perfume, and New York silk ties through the Lusaka airport. The Cultural Customs Clearer and his friends, who themselves carry items from Japan, Russia, and the US, look on as a young reporter asks the Honorable Arts Delegate about the outcome of his worldwide cultural fact-finding tour. First the minister thanks the donors for sending him on such an important trip, and then he proceeds to explain his grand discovery--"Zambian art and culture are most definitely being eroded by foreign influences!"

The caustic humor of The Arts Delegate (2000), by the cartoonist popularly known in Zambia as "Yuss," captures a dynamic readily found in the Zambian art world, where the people who give to the arts with one hand--be they donors, government workers, or cultural "experts"--too often snatch something back with the other hand. In the cartoon The Expatriate Art Expert (2000), misguided Professor Bend Ova Pedsen congratulates two casual workers, who are painting a wall, for what he thinks is magnificent installation art, while he imagines the enormous profit he will make when he exhibits their "art" in London, Paris, and New York.

While the economically influential international community in Zambia, made up largely of diplomats and NGO workers, provides a profitable market for local Zambian artists, the transitory status of these buyers inevitably results in Zambian art being shipped to the homes of foreign amateurs. It is for this tea son that Lechwe Trust, founded in 1986 and currently chaired by Zambian artist Cynthia Zukas, aims to purchase quality contemporary Zambian art so that it remains in the country and can be viewed by local audiences. The Trust also finances the education of outstanding artists and cultural practitioners. (William Bwalya Miko, curator of this exhibition, was one such recipient.) While Lechwe aims to protect Zambian art for Zambians, this exhibition demonstrates that the organization moves beyond an essentialist notion of Zambian art by including artists with diverse cultural backgrounds.

The Lechwe Collection, which due to the lack of a permanent gallery was last exhibited in 2000, is extremely significant in its comprehensive representation of Zambian art and in its commitment to Zambian viewers. International exhibitions of African art have tirelessly explored the themes of cultural identity and displacement in terms of the African diaspora, but few of these exhibitions ever land on African soil and even fewer focus on movement to and displacement within African countries.

In Mat for Unwelcome Visitors (1992), Agnes Buya Yombwe weaves together uneven pieces of wood chips and wire to make a mat that would be very uncomfortable to sit on. Conceptually, this work is surprising based on the warm hospitality demonstrated by most Zambians, but considering the fact that Yombwe currently lives and works in Botswana, the piece alludes to the potential discomfort of Africans who cross national borders and face xenophobic attitudes that too easily breed in tight economies.

In There is No Place Like Home (1997), Laurey Nevers, who was born in Canada and now lives and works in Zambia, unleashes the horrors of children's fairytales as she juxtaposes Halloween masks and paraphernalia with Central African minkisi figures found in Zambian craft markets. Inside a dark wooden box, a Rapunzel-like nkisi cloaked with long hair is decorated with plastic gems and the rubber claw of a toy monster that recalls the real animal claws bound together in the power objects (ubwanga) typical of Luapula Province. The confined princess is crowned with the remnants of a white spiral shell that evokes African royalty. Her torso is pierced with sharp nails that seem to have been driven into the figure to the rhythm of the chant-like phrase written on the box, "There's no place like home; There's no place like home; There's no place like home," as if the artist were trying to convince herself of this illusive reality.

In the painting Going Home (1986), Style Kunda portrays three figures leaving the safety of a lit street and walking into the dark night across a lonely field. Having worked until nightfall to meet the demands of basic survival, the journey home is uninviting and potentially dangerous. Several artists, such as Henry Tayali (Rushing for Bread Which Was Not There, 1975), Lutanda Mwamba (Water Crisis, 1997), and Dean Nsabashi (Water Queue, 2001), comment on a society where the expected comforts of home are stripped away by a persistent poverty that grips the majority of Zambians.

While few Zambian artists are explicitly political, due to Kenneth Kaunda's legacy of intolerance that endures in President Mwanawasa's government, Geoffrey Phiri's Area Behind Our Parliament (2003) subtly points to the greed of politicians that robs Zambians of an acceptable standard of living. In his large painting and collage, Phiri portrays young men aimlessly lingering amid the filth of uncollected rubbish and Chibuku beer containers. The vast rift between the title, which implies that the people are the true owners of the government, and the image of squalor encapsulates the disjuncture of Zambian society.

While each regime points accusingly to its predecessor as a tactic of distraction, Stephen Kappata's painting UNIP and MMD Governments (1998) shows that even the dramatic change from Kaunda's one-party state to Chiluba's multiparty system simply solved one problem by introducing another. While Zambians queued for food and transport under the UNIP (United National Independence Party) they were retrenched under the MMD (Movement for Multi-Party Democracy) when foreign investors swooped in.

During his rule (1964-91), Kaunda introduced a strategy of Zambianization to combat the cultural erosion brought about by colonialism. He banned the import of foreign cultural materials and promulgated his slogan "A Nation Without Culture is Dead." In Kappata's painting Country Without Culture Is Dead (1989), Kaunda is portrayed wearing his characteristic safari suit and holding his trademark handkerchief, which he recently donated to the Lusaka National Museum. As if In unreserved support of cultural ceremonies, he grins as he watches a likishi dancer skillfully climb a pole, but the police van in the background reminds viewers of the fact that Kaunda was wary of such large gatherings--especially in the late 1980s--for they held the potential for the germination of political opposition.

Patrick Mweemba's mid-1980s series of woodcuts representing cultural ceremonies shows how at this time only a handful of annual Zambian ceremonies were well-known: N'cwala, Likumbi lya Mize, Kuomboka, Shimunenga, and Mutomboko. While these few ceremonies--named the "big five" based on animal spotting in game parks--are still favored by the tourist board and major sponsors, the shift to multiparty politics brought with it a still-rising phenomenon of annual cultural ceremonies that currently number more than sixty.

Several works in the Lechwe Collection refer to celebratory gatherings of people in community cultural events, such as Godfrey Setti's pastel sketch Gule wa Mkulu (1988), which represents Chewa nyau dancers, and his painting Chinamwali (1987), showing an initiation dance of Chewa girls, in many instances, the focal point of these groups are women who bring together neighborhoods and families, such as in Stary Mwaba's Matebeto (2003), which depicts the Bemba ceremony where a wife's family presents a feast to the husband in appreciation of the couple's marriage.

While women are often portrayed gathered in groups, such as in the

beautifully painted Market Place (2004) by Raphael Mutulikwa, they are also represented as strong individuals in portraits by Lutanda Mwamba and Mulenga Chafilwa. While the woman in Mwamba's Untitled (2003) stares boldly at the viewer--a striking gesture in Zambian society--Chafilwa's painting Blue Collar (2003) depicts a young woman with her eyes cast down, wearing a blouse with a bright blue collar. Based on the title, this painting could be interpreted as a representation of a sex worker, but Chafilwa empathetically portrays an individual with her own personal story and struggles.

Such individuality is dynamically brought forth in Portrait of Milumbe Haimbe (2004), a skillfully drawn pencil-and-charcoal portrait of a young Zambian visual artist and science fiction author. This portrait is part of a series of twelve portraits of Lusaka-based artists by Shadreck Simukanga, who passed away in early 2005. Simukanga's sudden death shocked the arts community, and his series of portraits, which includes a self-portrait, holds invaluable meaning when viewed locally by a community that is knit together by its passion for the arts and its challenges of daily life. Works such as these would become faceless portraits were they exhibited outside of Zambia. It is for this reason that the Zambian community of artists and art lovers so values the mandate of Lechwe Trust, which prevents would-be Cultural Customs Clearers from clearing the best of Zambian art out of the country to foreign lands.