Amanda Mushate presents “Shuviro Yamai – (Mother’s Wish)” at First Floor Gallery in Harare

Complexity is a flaw in Amanda Mushate life, as it is in the lives of most Zimbabweans. The fact that it happens at all is a small wonder, no less, and has been for ages.

Over the last 100 years they have been exhausted and gone through the disruptions of colonialism, the battle for freedoms, post border improvement and the simultaneous political monetary spectacle of land change, the HIV pandemic, sanctions and the emergency of out of control inflation, frequently at the same time. Add to this the physical and social disruptions of urbanization and the effect of financial relocation and its impact on families and you get a pragmatic view of the mental, social, monetary, physical, educational and spatial breakdown of a typical Zimbabwean.

How do you bring a child into this reality? How do we parent in this present, what confidence can we at some point retrieve in our souls to build the boldness to begin? How can we reflect on our connections in the chain of generations, knowing now what we know, while also knowing now what we don’t know?

Amanda Mushate reminds us of this through her exhibition “Shuviro Yamai” (Mother’s Wish) at the First Floor Gallery in Harare, Zimbabwe until September 4, 2022.

These are the conforming questions at the heart of Shuviro Yamai, a collection of fierce, unwavering and disobedient works, which asks that joy and magnificence be not only imaginable but important in an existence where they are often considered.

Excellence is often downplayed in contemporary art discourse as something superficial and really wanted to be apologized for, as an extravagance, as something below high scholarly desire. As style does not derive from the central laws of nature, as the reverence we feel when we look at the magnificence of our children should be approved by a different option of love.

Amanda Mushate does not allow us to be so small. Her works demand boldness and magnificence like twin flames, which make the daily routine worthwhile. Variety is marketed through layers and woven lines, which disintegrate and dominate human forms in movement and space. These are our accounts as a whole, in our current reality where we can attempt to grasp the meaning of all that we experience and are often assured of failing to do so. Amanda Mushate lets us know that magnificence exists, that bliss is authentic, not as a goal, but rather as an approach to being. Not in spite of our conditions, but rather because it is the idea of life.

Amanda Mushate‘s reality through her exhibition “Shuviro Yamai” is a space of extreme vulnerability and extreme opportunity, where we shape our reality instead of being shaped by it. It helps the human by reminding us that Amanda Mushate‘s choice can also be our decision. While it might want to fall, we can live with the assumption that we give up the battle to get out.