Disrupting Zimbabweâs Silenced Pasts through Art: a Conversation with Owen Maseko

Amanda Hammar; Owen Maseko

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Chapter 3 Disrupting Zimbabweâs Silenced Pasts through Art: a Conversation with Owen Maseko

In: The Politics of the Past in Zimbabwe

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Amanda Hammar

Amanda Hammar
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Owen Maseko

Owen Maseko
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 75â94

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004728004_005

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Abstract

This chapter weaves together the core elements of several conversations during 2022 in Zimbabwe and Denmark respectively, between multi-talented Zimbabwean artist and creative activist, Owen Maseko, and Denmark-based Zimbabwean scholar, Amanda Hammar. Maseko is especially well known in relation to his one-man exhibition of paintings and installations at the National Gallery in Bulawayo addressing the state-led Gukurahundi massacres in the 1980s, which was forcibly closed in 2010 by the then still Mugabe-led regime. Yet Maseko is marked by a much broader set of relationships to both his own past and to the wider social and political histories, presents and futures of Matabeleland, which continue to shape â indeed to âhauntâ â his interweaving personal, artistic and political journeys. In the context of Zimbabweâs current political environment in which âanything you do can easily be a crimeâ, he is acutely aware of what it means to speak oneâs own truths, let alone to disrupt the state-enforced silences surrounding the violent truths of Gukurahundi. Despite this, he is naturally drawn to being part of a wider, collective process of making visible, naming and memorialising both historical and present injustices through his art and other creative practices. He recognises being simultaneously a unique individual artist and deeply bound to the communities of which he is a part. In this, it is clear to him that his story is not âmy story aloneâ.

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The Politics of the Past in Zimbabwe

Series:Â Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies, Volume: 35

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004728004

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 31 Mar 2025

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African Studies	Education	Media Studies
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Ancient Near East and Egypt	Human Rights and Humanitarian Law	Musicology
Art History	International Law	Philosophy
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Chapter 3 Disrupting Zimbabweâs Silenced Pasts through Art: a Conversation with Owen Maseko

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The Politics of the Past in Zimbabwe

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Chapter 3 Disrupting Zimbabweâs Silenced Pasts through Art: a Conversation with Owen Maseko