HIGH heels and stilettos populate Miriro Mwandiambira's current exhibition at the First Floor Gallery. It may feel out of place for a man to walk through the show, like entering the women's section at a department store.
But the shoe boutique vibe gives way to deeper psychological issues at stake.
Just as in her past performance works, the multidisciplinary artist shows a knack for making bold statements that evoke a sense of vulnerability. Her collage and acrylic on canvas works are an intimate, introspective collection that is decidedly centred on a woman's well-being.
The exhibition is titled She Remembered Who She Was and features artworks depicting legs in various postures that draw attention to the feet and shoes. The severed limbs barely extending to the lower torso, become autonomous protagonists in their disembodied state. In some cases her stylistic choices hearken to early works of Wycliffe Mundopa, even going back to Misheck Masamvu. The title of the exhibition should probably be read in the same way artists write their biographies in the third person voice. The titles of the artworks are summed up in the exhibition title in a way that suggests a laser-focused theme.
Although she belongs to a different totem, the artist acknowledges that the prominent black and white stripes painted on some of the body parts and background are a deliberate ode to the zebra totem. VanaSamaita, people of the zebra totem who describe themselves as manjenjenje ganda revasikana in their praise poetry, claim to possess the beauty and grace of a zebra. In some of the artworks, scaled-up flowers are placed in juxtaposition to the body parts in a way that is too convenient to be interpreted as sexual innuendo. Here the artist has done something similar to American painter Georgia O’Keeffe who had to insist that her magnified flower paintings widely perceived to be erotic were only abstractions meant to challenge the viewer’s ways of looking.
The artist says she started by creating work that depicted shoes only, until an inner voice prompted her to consider ‘what’s next?’ She found the answer to be the female body which inhabits the shoe, particularly the legs and feet. That is when the concept for her current work began to develop. A viewer might speculate about how the female body in her work might evolve further. Perhaps it will be fully materialised but in a twisted, raw and intense way like a portrait by German painter Egon Schiele.
A lot of women wear heels to complement an outfit before heading out to church or the boardroom. Given the level of discomfort they have to endure in high heels, some resort to starting in more comfortable shoes and switching to heels just before showing up. Chiropractors have warned about harmful side effects of wearing high heels, which include stress on knees, hips, and lower back. Nonetheless, forgoing high heels is considered out of the question. Popular culture has promoted the idea that a woman in high heels is confident, attractive, and dominant. Those who are committed to their high heels insist that without them an expensive outfit becomes less impressive. Wearing heels may be considered a form of self-inflicted torture. In situations where it is considered mandatory, high heels become a tool of oppression. Mwandiambira's collage works include clippings from magazines about the world of fashion and the movie industry.
In Zimbabwe, there is an enduring patriarchal attitude that judges women for their choice of clothes. Distorted traditional beliefs backed up by twisted religious doctrine are used to cudgel women into submission and exert control over their bodies. Decades of conditioning have resulted in a culture of prepackaged thoughts and ways of looking and speaking. To get their power back some women dress in a deliberately provocative way to subvert the stereotypes. In Mwandiambira's work, the languid and mildly erotic posture in which the legs are posed might easily draw some ire from the censor. Through posture and symbolic gestures, the work is executed with a subtle defiance that does not deliberately court controversy.
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Mwandiambira's work challenges habitual ways of looking as it was made in the interest of personal empowerment. To remember who she was might extend beyond being comfortable with sexuality to embracing small quirks, rare oddities and other personal idiosyncrasies without feeling guilty and apologetic.
Although she does not define herself as one, ideologically the body of work sits at the frontier of third-wave feminism that reclaims sexuality while rejecting sexual objectification. For a young woman in her position remembering is a form of militant resistance and rebellion against being defined by others through religion, tradition and social norms. The protagonist who remembers that she has been living under a mask because of conscious and unconscious pressure to become what others want her to be.
While the works appear to be deeply personal and revealing, one gets the feeling that among the myriad references and symbols the artist has hidden something by putting it right in front of the public eye. In some cases, cisgender male viewers may be given a pass for not getting it, as they were probably never meant to. After all, men could never both literally and metaphorically walk in this young woman's shoes. In remembering who she was, Mwandiambira reserves a part for herself, serves something for her fellow women only and also shares something for everyone.
