IT IS WHAT IT IS. A solo show by Zemba Luzamba. At Ebony Design. Until November 2. DANNY SHORKEND reviews
DEADPAN personalities, unapproachable figures, mere functional role-playing and a kind of anti-expressionism typifies the works of painter Zemba Luzamba. One might interpret the works as political commentary, particularly in an African context (the artist himself was raised in Congo, then he moved to Zambia and finally settled on the tip of Africa) and as reinventing the politically charged as accessories to the banal, the commonplace, the insignificant.
This interpretation lends itself to the sense that somehow when the individual is submerged within various institutions and shall I say, fashions, there is possibly a loss of the uniqueness of self, of expansive, exuberant energy, even joy.
Yet surely the mature approach and the necessary approach is acknowledgment that one is, by definition part of some or other framework, call it society, and to assert power (egoism) with responsibility.
That one should endeavour to be part of various social bodies within a certain context and be alive, so that self-realization and altruism – as an extreme case – are not mutually exclusive.
The paintings form a thematic whole dealing with various components of “organised society – the chairman; the whistle blower; military; police; first lady; the dictator” and so on. The style lacks expressionistic swagger, but is rather laboriously well finished as the folds of the suits are incisive, patiently rendered as light and dark alternate in repetitive sequencing.
The brushwork is restrained, controlled, while the background space is generally rather flat, resisting the viewer simply sinking into space and this in itself is further accentuated by his well painted patterns in the background, an aesthetic device that only adds to the theme wherein communication, order, human connection between the protagonists of the various paintings actually seem voiceless, inaudible, incommunicative and void of individual personality.
Instead, as intimated at the outset, the veneer of order masks a reality that is perhaps somewhat chaotic, the game of life or rather the games we humans engage in often in fact repel true, deep communication. The army watches, waiting for action; the police police governmental power; the codes of society change and do not change – fashion comes and goes and yet fashion it is, or in other terms: the periphery (institutional fashions) is the centre, and the centre (philosophy and art) is the periphery.
Even as the artist tries to circumvent this no man’s land with his painting where two heads meet, not so much collide, an alternative to the etiquette of the handshake, the painting does not reveal transcendence, a new norm, a new order. The flat yellow background – again not joyous – is merely a means to highlight the comic device – that indeed communication and thus real change may not happen, whether we are talking specifically about our continent or even on a more vast scale. Yet surely there is hope?
Zemba perhaps suggests that there is. The fact that he does not actually paint the “movers and shakers” of the world; the fact that he has chosen to render these figures in the same, staid, what I call a kind of “inexpressive disutopia” – acts to perhaps make the viewer aware that in a given society there are the entrapments of “position”, function and slavish adherence to rules which in turn produce in its wake the herd mentality – the belief that following an individual or an organisation will lead to salvation.
Instead, we should acknowledge the individual, the diversity of a person’s uniqueness and (only) then forge community, an order. That is not saying that one merely rebels for the sake of it; certainly some sort of conformity is mature.
Art has notoriously fought hard to emancipate the individual. We should be cautious and worry if that battle is in vain, both within the institution of art itself and as related to other social practices.
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