Sculpture

The story of the "Shona" stone carvers, a network of African sculptors active under Rhodesian white-minority rule during the 1960s, constitutes a challenging and under-explored, yet critical, chapter in the history of independence-era African modernism. Centered on a cluster of workshops, whose western expat proprietors emphasized the unschooled naiveté, spiritual directness, and authenticity of their black artists, this movement nevertheless provided those artists with both economic stability and a significant outlet for individual creative expression. It also claimed to revitalize a centuries-old legacy of excellence in stone carving evident in the celebrated bird sculptures and dry masonry traditions produced in Great Zimbabwe (ca. 1000–1600) and earlier settlements in southeastern Africa.

This work was carved by Asiki "Ask" Mdoka, who left Malawi, where he was born and raised, to become a tobacco worker at Tengenenge before turning to sculpture around 1967. His father was a professional hunter, which Mdoka claimed as a strong influence in his work. Both a devout Muslim and an initiate of his own Yao ancestral faith, Mdoka addressed a wide array of subjects through his art. Perhaps most distinctive are his abstract works, frequently based on plant forms and the life of the bush, of which this work is a classic example.