Laughing it off.
Better than loud music, drugs, alcohol, and sex.
By Nyadzombe Nyampenza
It may be impossible to find a pretty face among the throngs that populate a Lovemore Kambudzi painting. The characters are endowed with bulbous foreheads, thick slabs of lips, sunken eyebrows, outsize feet, and way out hips. They appear mean, sly, dense, and over sexualized. Kambudzi uses these caricatures to explore Zimbabwean social issues.
The homely people can be seen in Lovemore’s painting titled Hard Earned. The artwork depicts people in a queue at an automated teller machine (ATM). ‘Hard earned’, is a phrase that was used often when people griped, vented, and discussed the shortage of cash. It speaks to the desperation, frustration, and anger from struggling to get cash at the bank, after having sweated for it. The queue in the painting is so long that it goes to the end of the block and backs up. Some people stand with crossed arms and fists stuck in pockets, throwing furtive glances towards the ATM.
Kambudzi’s painting allows the viewer to confront the traumatic experience. The humorous take encourages the person to laugh at the situation, and themselves. It enables the person to finally let go of the anger and frustration.
[ Hard Earned was at Gallery Delta, in the exhibition Crossing Boundaries.]
