Laiwan

African Notes Parts 1 and 2, 1983/2020
3-channel 149 black and white Panatomic-X 35 mm slide projection and 1/4″ reel analogue audiotape transferred to digital, 15 m 22 s
Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, purchased with support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Morris and Helen Belkin Foundation, 2021

African Notes Parts 1 and 2 are composed of photographs that Laiwan took on a trip home to her birthplace of Zimbabwe in 1982, two years after the country’s independence. Of its inception, Laiwan explains, “African Notes was made during my third year of art school. At this time, I joined my parents who were going back to visit Zimbabwe – which had been apartheid Rhodesia when I was born there. I had left Rhodesia for Canada in 1977, which was at the height of the war against the illegal government of white settlers who were running apartheid Rhodesia; Zimbabwe was liberated in 1980. In 1977 when I arrived in Canada, I wasn’t really prepared for what I’d encounter here, I was 15 years old. Between 1977 and 1982, I was still finding my way of what it is to be in this place called Canada, still trying to navigate what is unceded land. I didn’t even know what unceded land meant at that time, but I knew the colonial structures of my homeland and these questions were circulating within me. At this time, there was no discourse at art school around ideas of unceded land or this kind of alienation, of being on the outside of the hegemonic dominant structures of what is called Canada. My return to Great Zimbabwe in 1982 – the movement, the trip itself – is a re-commemoration of the indigeneity and the power of the Indigenous people of Zimbabwe, and it was made through African Notes.”

Part 1: Feet of Clay of African Notes visually explores the site of Great Zimbabwe, where archaeological ruins trace the royal palace of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe built by the ancestors of the Indigenous Shona people. Part 2: In Tended Garden is located at the nearby Kyle Dam, known today as Lake Mutirikwi. The first projection is accompanied by a poetic text that expresses encounters with dreaming, as it variably expresses one’s desire for home, the illusions of colonialism and the waywardness of skygazing. African Notes introduced 35 mm slide dissolves into Laiwan’s practice. The technology presents images and text in motion, which supports the artist’s attention to the effects of migration and adaptation on consciousness.

A book version of African Notes was made for the exhibition Small, Medium and Not Large: Books and Collages 1982 to Present at grunt gallery in 1996. It was an opportunity for the artist to re-examine the 35 mm slide dissolve project as still images and after having returned to Zimbabwe again between 1989 and 1992.

Listen to Laiwan and Melinda Mollineaux talk about their respective works, African Notes and Cadboro Bay, that were part of the exhibition Thought, outside curated by Amy Kazymerchyk (5 January-10 May 2020) at Western Front.

Over the course of Laiwan: Traces, Erasures, Resists, we will consider works from the Belkin’s permanent collection through the lens of the pandemic world around us, in particular through the words of the artist. Works from the Collection extends these works from the gallery space to the intimacy of the home; to see more of the Belkin’s collection, visit https://collection.belkin.ubc.ca.

Images (from top): African Notes installed at the Belkin as part of Laiwan: Traces, Erasures, Resists (7 January-10 April 2022). Photo: Rachel Topham Photgraphy; African Notes (details).