A Hidden Treasure in Brooklyn: The CAMBA Shona Gallery
Many residents of Brooklyn and our neighboring boroughs know about CAMBA and it’s many programs. Since 1977 CAMBA has provided employment, education, health-related, housing, legal, social, business development and youth services to approximately 30,000 individuals each year.
One of CAMBA’s activities is its Shona Gallery. Occupying 1,500 square feet in CAMBA’s health services building, Shona Gallery houses one of the largest collections of Shona art in the United States. The gallery began in 1991as a way to help support CAMBA’s many services, while simultaneously supporting artists living and working in Zimbabwe. With the aid of an art dealer raised in Zimbabwe and living in Brooklyn, CAMBA’s Shona Gallery is able to have a direct relationship with the artists, whose work is purchased outright.
The word Shona means both the Bantu people and language of natives of Zimbabwe southern Mozambique. The range of dialects spoken and regions where the artists live and work is reflected in the diversity of styles and techniques visible when surveying Shona Gallery’s offerings. While the techniques of stone carving that Shona artists employ have been passed down for hundreds of years, and subjects are culled from traditional folklore and spiritual beliefs, Shona art is decidedly modern. Examples of Shona art can be found in the collections of Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musee Rodin in Paris, Queen Elizabeth II, the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, the actor Danny Glover among others.
The CAMBA Shona Gallery is home to the work of some of the world’s most renowned Shona artists, including works by Nicholas Mukomberanwa (1940 – 2002). On view currently is his work “The Prophet”. Carved from springstone, or black, serpentine, known to be one of the hardest and least available stones used for sculpting in Zimbabwe, the material is prized for its under layer of brown, which adds a rich dimension to the otherwise hard black surface. “The Prophet” exhibits a skill for abstraction in the carving of the head, where the face is reduced to geometric forms and a play between positive and negative space, as if probing the interior of the subjects mind. The beard is carved in undulating, narrow lines, suggesting the thinning, whispy whiskers of an elder statesman. Rough, brown-hued edges suggest that the prophet has emerged from the stone itself to impart its wisdom before reuniting with the stone it was born from.
Other master artists included in the CAMBA Shona Gallery’s impressive collection are Gregory Mustasa, whose “Bathing Beauty” (pictured below) carved in golden opalstone is a quiet, contemplative and wholly unobtrusive representation of a private moment, and the carving of the hair is wholly extraordinary; Lawrence Mukomberanwa, son of Nicholas; Richard Mteki; Lameck Bonjisi; Adam Gatsi; and Fanizani Akuda, among others.
Gregory Mustasa, "Bathing Beauty," opalstone
I met with Joanne Oplustil, CAMBA’s Executive Director, who stressed the importance of supporting Shona art now, since many of the artists support not only their immediate families, but extended families and beyond with the sale of their art work.
CAMBA’s Shona Gallery, located at 19 Winthrop Street between Flatbush and Bedford Avenues, is open by appointment between the hours of 9am to 5pm, Monday, Wednesday and Friday and 9am to 7pm, Tuesday and Thursday. To set up an appointment and for more information, call 718-287-2600 and ask for Lorelie, or e-mail the gallery at info@shonasculptures.com. For more information on the gallery’s holdings and Shona art and artists, please visit the website at http://shonasculptures.com.
For more information on CAMBA and its services, visit http://www.camba.org.
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