Shona Sculpt

Several years ago I went to Zimbabwe for a work trip, my first visit to the country. As I rode in from the airport to my hotel in Harare, I noticed what looked like a collection of boulders by the side of the road, which as I got closer I realized were not boulders but carved stone statues. In my previous travels in Africa, stone artwork, assembled informally by the side of the road, was not something I had seen before. I was intrigued.

Over the next couple of days, I noticed a few more of these makeshift roadside sculpture gardens around town and I finally got to visit one, where I saw the work up close and met some of the artists. As I learned, these pieces had been crafted out of serpentine, a metamorphic rock quarried locally. The artists, members of the Shona tribe, had developed a style blending traditional African elements, particularly faces and forms, with European modernism along the lines of Henry Moore — often exploring the unique physical characteristics of the stone itself. No mechanical tools are used in the sculpting process, which often involves polishing parts of the stone to a reflective sheen.

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I was so taken by this artwork that I sought to bring some to the USA, with the dual purpose of providing a new market for the artists and making these amazing works available to people I knew.