FLIGHT OF THE FALLEN
It is hard to overestimate the challenges facing some contemporary women artists in Zimbabwe and in Africa, especially those who are adamant about maintaining their artistic integrity and loyalty to family and tradition. Insisting on this kind of commitment in an impatient field (artworld and the market) sometimes means that career cannot advance at the same pace as that of a male peer. Being a woman artist also means that you may be working with ‘slower’ media and materials more associated with intricacies of what might be called ‘women’s work’ like stitching and sewing without engaging assistants with the same ease as some male artists do, which means that your work takes longer to make. Mavis Tauzeni has been working with First Floor Gallery Harare for over a decade and her progress as an artist has been underscored by relentless commitment, integrity and an ambition balanced by personal humility.

Tauzeni’s works challenge us to engage with incredible complexity of what it means to be a human being and a woman. This human is one who can be described in terms of elements (gender, origins, language, skin colour) but never reduced to them. Her compositions are symphonies of material application dedicated to a quest for emancipation and a defiance in the face of pressure to conform. Using a unique combination of techniques – painting, collage, cardprint, monotype and stitching, Tauzeni’s works float in and out of figuration, escape attempts to tempt and define. She creates elaborate vistas – dreamlike but not absent of nightmares, beautiful without aspiring to be so, speaking her own truth urgently, while avoiding our direct gaze.

Flight of the Fallen is a tribute to everyone who is underestimated on a personal and a global scale, as song of inspiration for those who believe in perseverance, commitment and self-respect as foundation of success.
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Valerie Kabov
©2022

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