elmquist, dana.__ a bird cloaked in guns post-conflict sculpture from maputo by dana elmquist dana...

A BIRD CLOAKED IN GUNSPost-Conflict Sculpture from MaputoDana Elmquist

Editions Karthala | Politique africaine 2005/4 N 100 | pages 198 213 ISSN 0244-7827ISBN 9782845867476

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Dana Elmquist, A Bird Cloaked in Guns. Post-Conflict Sculpture from Maputo , Politiqueafricaine 2005/4 (N 100), p. 198-213.DOI 10.3917/polaf.100.0198--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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ocument tlcharg depuis www.cairn.info - - - 95.94.211.236 - 15/05/2015 12h26. Editions Karthala

198 Cosmopolis : de la ville, de lAfrique et du monde

Arms into Art

This essay addresses a movement in modern sculpture which meldspolitical history and aesthetics to groundbreaking ends. Artists at the heart ofthis movement utilize weapons left over from Mozambiques two civil wars(1961-1975 and 1978-1992), recasting them into delicate, dynamic works ofart 1. In the pages that follow, I engage works created by these artists in twoways: formally and through analyzing the materials of which they are made.I focus in particular on the makes and models of the weapons used to createthe objects. In so doing I situate the movement not only in present-dayMozambique but also in a broader international political climate of the last fourdecades. This allows me to consider a series of related questions: Why dosuch sculptures appear inMozambique today?Howprecisely did theweaponsemployed to construct themmake their way toMaputo?Why are they a focusof interest for contemporary artists?What does the presence of this sculpturalgenre in the capital of Mozambique signify? What role does it play in theconstruction of national identity in post-colonial Mozambique? What does itreveal about the political structure of the country? The answers I offer are notmeant to be exhaustive, but to initiate a discussion about the political contentof an emerging urban art form.

Dana Elmquist

A Bird Cloaked in GunsPost-Conflict Sculpture from Maputo

Weapons of Soviet, Western European and American

origin, once used by Renamo and Frelimo, have been

recycled by sculptors in urban Mozambique to produce

politically engaged works of art. These sculptures

reference the countrys recent war-torn past and shed

light on its present-day social and political structure.

The following article focuses on the work of Maputo-

based sculptor Fiel dos Santos, one of the most

important creators at work in this genre and the creator

of The Bird that Wants to Survive.

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199Politique africaine n 100 - dcembre 2005-janvier 2006

Arms into Birds: the Art of Fiel Dos Santos

AKs, TTs and G3s: Arts of the Assault RifleAkey figure in the recycled weapons sculpture movement is artist Fiel dos

Santos Marques Rafael (b. Maputo, 1972). Among his best-known works is apiece entitled The Bird that Wants to Survive (1998) (see illustration 10). Some3.5 feet tall, the sculpture depicts a blackwinged stilt (Himantopus Himantopus),delicately balanced as it strides forward on webbed feet. The Bird that Wantsto Survive is made entirely of discardedweapon parts. These component parts,I show below, very concretely reference the second civil war that wrackedMozambique in the second half of the 20th century. As many other countriesaround the globe at the time, from the 1950s onwards, the land and resourcesofMozambiquewere part of a two distant regimes competing political agendas those of the United States and of Soviet Russia. The war Fiels bird referenceswas a product of this competition, actively caused, aided and abetted by thetwo empires then ruling the world 2. Fiels bird, however, does not referencejust this one war. As I also show below, it addresses the war of 1961-1975 aswell. In speaking of these twomurderous conflicts, I go on to argue, it speaksof both Maputo and its hinterland to the North, articulating a set of complexrelationships linking urban and rural Mozambique.

Two main types of guns appear in The Bird that Wants to Survive: guns ofSoviet origin and guns of Western European and American origin. The bodyof the bird is made from a coupling of weapons: the butt of a German G3 is

1. The findings presented in these pages are the result of fieldwork undertaken in Maputo in 2004.Parts of this essay were first presented as a senior thesis at Sarah Lawrence College, under thedirection of DominiqueMalaquais, in the Visual Culture andAfricana Studies divisions. It is the basisof a Ph.D. thesis inAfricanistArt history in progress at UCLA. The practice of transforming arms intoart described here is not an isolated phenomenon. The Eiffel tower is in part made of melted downcannon metal; in Israel, artists have installed massive sculptures made from spheroid containersfilled with guns left to rust; in New Orleans a project entitled Artists of a Different Caliber hasprovided local artists with weapons confiscated by the police department and given them the taskof creating art to address the high level of violence in the citys poorest districts; in Cambodia, overthe past ten years, artists have been producing statuary fromdiscardedweapons that bears close formaland conceptual relations with the sculpture discussed in this essay.2. For an overview of civil war in 20th centuryMozambique, see, inter alia: W. Finnegan,AComplicatedWar: The Harrowing of Mozambique, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992;A. and B. Isaacman.Mozambique: FromColonialism to Revolution, 1900-1982, Boulder, Co.,Westview Press, 1983; E.Mondlane,The Struggle for Mozambique, Baltimore, Penguin Books, 1969; M.A. Pitcher, TransformingMozambique:The Business of Politics, 1975-2000, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2002; A. Vines, Renamo:Terrorism inMozambique, London, Centre for SouthernAfrican Studies, University of York, James Currey,1991.

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melded with the handle of a Soviet-designed AK-47. Both types of guns areassault rifles, one mechanical, the other gas powered. Both were wielded bysoldiers fighting inMozambique in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. These soldiersbelonged to two broad coalitions: Renamo (ResistnciaNacionalMoambicana),funded, as we shall see in further detail, by theWest and its allies in the region,and Frelimo (Frente de Libertao de Moambique), funded in part by theSoviet Union. Renamos financial resources were significantly greater thanFrelimos. This is reflected in the types of weapons the former employed.GermanG3swere too expensive for Frelimo to acquire; theywere the weaponsused by Renamo. G3 assault rifles, both used and new, were bought by Renamomostly in Europe. They were acquired through South African Apartheid andAmerican interests; intermediaries were used to purchase the rifles in bulkand transport them to South Africa, from where they made their way toMozambique. These intermediaries were used to arm Renamos militiaswith high quality weapons to suppress a popular uprising inMozambique and,in the process, to rid the country of any Soviet influence. The latters impactin the region is attested to by a large number of AK-47s left in the country atwars end in the early 1990s.

A third type of gun used to create The Bird that Wants to Survive aTokarev TT speaks also of a sustained Soviet presence in the region. Thisparticular weapon is distinctive because of its filled-in trigger. While in thisrespect the TT employed here is characteristic, in another respect it is not. TheTokarev in Fiels piece has a hollow handle; this would not have been the caseoriginally. While in use, the arm would have incorporated two pieces, eitherof wood or metal, covering this hollow section. The artist has removed these.Were they still present, the pistol-preywould prove too heavy, causing the birdto tilt forward. In all likelihood, however, there is more to Fiels use of thehollowed-out Tokarev than amere matter of balance. Were this any other typeof clip-loading pistol, one could not see if it is or is not loaded. Removal of thehandle-covering pieces allows the viewer to see that it is not. This is key in termsof the sculptures symbolism. Implicit is the absence of a clip as a reference topeace, to a war over and soldiers disarmed. The bird, thus, can be seen as asymbol of freedom. This is underscored by the creatures coloring: a mix ofbrowns and grey-greens. These hues suggest that Fiels bird is a female: femalebirds often have less vibrant colors than their male counterparts. They arealso typically (if erroneously) considered more peaceful than males. In asimilar view countries are often referred to in the feminine (though Mozam-bique itself, it should be noted, is not).

The allusions to peace and nationhood one sees in the inoperable Tokarevand the focus on a female identity for the bird depicted are reinforced by the

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201Politique africaine

A Bird Cloaked in Guns

carefully calibrated relationship of balance in which the gun parts composingthe creature stand to one another. G3, AK and Tokarev balance one anotherperfectly. Absent any one of them, present anymore sections of any one of thethree guns (the clip in the Tokarev, the front end of the G3 or various partsmissing from the AK), the bird could not stand: it would pitch forward orback. The creatures ability to stride forward is a product of the weaponsdismantling and re-articulation by the artist.

The dismantled small arms in Fiels work come from a prolonged effort ofNGOs, among which most notably Christian Aid, to do away with a hugestockpile of weapons reclaimed from Mozambiques citizens following the1978-1992 civil war. Survivors of the war were offered a trade: tools andbicycles in exchange for guns left over from the fighting. As a result of theextreme poverty that continues to plague Mozambique, rural peoples areoften unwilling to turn in their small arms without incentive, for they knowhowmuch the weapons are worth; an exchange programme has, thus, provenessential. ChristianAid estimates that there were, in 1992, almost sevenmillionsmall arms in the country3. This was a severe problem not only forMozambiquebut also for SouthAfrica, which, as a result ofMozambican poverty in the early1990s, was witness to the alarming growth of a black market in small armscrossing the border into SouthAfrica 4. This state of affairs led to an extensiveeffort to cut down on the presence of weapons inMozambique, which continuesto this day. Thanks to this effort, 200,000 small arms were reclaimed, includingassault rifles, rifles, pistols and grenade launchers 5. Fiel played a critical rolein this undertaking. Through the artist collective Ncleo deArte, his principalworkspace located in the heart of Maputo, he set afoot a programmewherebyhe and a group of artists he works with and trains receive a virtually unlimitedsupply of disabled weapons from Christian Aid with the permission of thegovernment of Mozambique 6.

The arms reclaiming programme Fiel set up in tandem with Christian Aidtargets the Mozambican countryside, for it is there, rather than in Maputo,that the majority of fighting took place, there that the majority of weaponshave historically been concentrated. So too, the artists work directly referencesthe hinterlands. As noted above, not one but two wars were fought there.

3. See .4. See P. W. Singer, Corporate Warrior: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, Ithaca, CornellUniversity Press, 2003.5. Fiel dos Santos, interview by the author, Maputo, August 2004.6. Ibid.

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Following a bitter struggle that lasted fourteen years (1961-1975), on 25 June 1975Frelimo, a local anti-colonial movement, ousted the Portuguese, who hadbeen present in Mozambique on and off since 1498. This first war led intoanother that in which the guns that make up Fiels bird were used. This,as we have seen, lasted from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. During thistime, Frelimo, which had established a Marxist state in 1975, fought forcontrol of Mozambique against the SouthAfrican andAmerican funded rightwing Renamo.

Frelimo and Renamo were linked, respectively, to pro-western and pro-soviet organizations at work simultaneously in other parts of the Africancontinent: they were not isolated phenomena. Renamo, also known as MNR(Mozambique National Resistance), in this same period was mirrored inAngola by Unita (Unio Nacional para a Independncia Total de Angola),while Frelimo was mirrored in Zimbabwe by Zanu (Zimbabwe AfricanNational Union). Once formed, circa 1962, Frelimo became a Soviet-fundedpopular movement. Both of the wars it waged against Western powerswere concentrated in the hinterlands of Mozambique, to the north of Maputo.In fact, Frelimo had control of the North in early 1975, when the army turnedon the Portuguese colonial government and Mozambique became an inde-pendent state.

Subject Matters: Two Wars, the City and its HinterlandsBased on the weapons incorporated in Fiels piece one is tempted to read

The Bird that Wants to Survive as a reference to the second of Mozambiques20th century wars only. This, however, is a limited interpretation.Although thepiece includes no weapons used by the Portuguese in Mozambique, otherpieces in the same series of Fiels work do. Clearly, the matter of Portugueseintervention is a magnet of interest for the artist. This suggests a reading of theGerman G3 in the piece that is both broader and more complex. The G3 canbe seen to represent the incessant and overt intervention in the popular courseof Mozambique byWestern forces throughout much of the second half of the20th century and before, going back, as we have seen, several centuries. Inthis sense, it can be seen to symbolize not only the US and Soviet, but also thecolonial Portuguese presence in the country.

At the same time, in The Bird thatWants to Survive, Fiel can be seen to be refe-rencing the current state of Mozambique. Frelimo and Renamo are not thingsof the past: they are the two principal parties around which the political lifeof the country is structured today. Now as before, the two remain vital forces.Whereas in the past they stood in violent opposition to one another, nowadaysthey counterbalance one another in the political arena. The body of Fiels bird

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can be read and understood, symbolically, in terms of this counterpoise. Twodistinct yet related and ultimately interdependent readings of the sculpture arethus possible. One sees the bird as a reference to Mozambique at war, theother as an image of Mozambique at peace. Both underscore the fragility ofthe nation, whether in war or peace. The balancing of clumsy weapons tocreate the ever-so-delicately poised bird speaks both to the balance-of-powerstruggle between the US and Soviet Union that was the cause of the secondcivil war and to the balancing act that is Mozambique post-war. In this latterregard, the artists handling of the birds trunk is particularly noteworthy.At the very core of the birds body its center of equilibrium the viewer willnote a small open, or negative, space. This space, located in between theG3 and the AK, underscores how delicate and transitory the footing andstructure of the piece are and, by extension, how delicate the footing of thecountry, divided at it is still between Frelimo and Renamo. Fiel is looking intoMozambiques past, finding patterns and overlaying them on the current stateof the nation.

The reading of Fiels piece as an allusion to present-day Mozambique canbe extended further. In the mid 1990s, British photojournalist Ian Bray visitedthe countryside beyond Maputo, where most of the fighting in the two warstook place. Specifically, he traveled to a town named Chicualacuala. There hediscovered the economic inequity that exists in Mozambique after more thanforty years of struggle. Bray carefully documents the infrastructure of thetown the state of cars, buses and public facilities. He finds most in a severestate of disrepair. What is unique about the infrastructure Bray reports on isthe fact that few, if any, of the vehicles and sites he photographs will everreceive the parts they require to be properly maintained. Like the country asa whole post war, they run the risk of never being fully, or in the long term,completely functional. Arguably if ironically, the dismantled and thus non-functional weapons that make up Fiels bird reference a similar state of affairs.That both Brays machines and Fiels weapons were imported from abroad,imposed onMozambique by other countries for their own benefit and financialgain rather than for Mozambiques good, further underscores this parallel.

Of particular interest to Bray, in his photographs, is the infrastructure ofwater. After the end of the second war in 1992, the country was forced tocombat a series of droughts and the rise of AIDS to its current level of nearlytwenty percent of the sexually active population 7. In one of Brays photographs,

7. World Heath Organization, based on the anonymous testing of mothers blood when giving birth,.

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some forty Chicualacuala residents are seen pushing a train car full of waterto a more central location in the town. The car was unhitched from a movingtrain as it was on its way from Maputo to Zimbabwe. This, Bray writes, isa common scene. Wherever such cars come to rest is where the water theyare carrying is dropped off. The people of Chicualacuala are left not only todistribute the water, but also to determine how fast it should be used up, forthere is no telling when the next train car will arrive 8.

This state of affairs is a direct result of the two wars, generally speaking,and of the second battle for control of Mozambique in particular. In the 1980sand 1990s, private armies amongwhich the company Executive Outcomes were deployed by US and US-backed (notably South African) interests toprotect foreign interests in Mozambiques rich gold and diamond mines 9.In the process, access to natural resources like wells, which in the 1970s hadsupplied hinterland towns like Chicualacuala with sufficient water, were com-promised. During the same time, much of the surrounding farmlandwas laidwith approximately two million land mines 10. After a permanent cease-firebetween Frelimo and Renamo was reached in 1992 and the country returnedto peace in the mid 1990s, Mozambique was left not only with a large annualexpenditure for disarmament and de-mining, but also with a disastrousproblem of access to water in its poorest regions 11.

In these same hinterlands forty years earlier, the Portuguese forced therural people to grow cotton under a brutal regime. By current estimates, thereis less than 20% of arable land in Mozambique today 12. Certainly there musthave beenmore arable land in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, for Portugal profitedsignificantly from exports of cotton fromMozambique; indeed, in this countrywhere virtually none of the fields were used for cotton prior to the late 1930s,almost all of the land was forcibly converted to cotton cultivation in order forthe Portuguese colony to turn a profit. Very little of the wealth thus generated,it should be noted, went to those producing it. TheMozambican farmers wereallowed to keep just enough of their crop to bargain for necessities, whichwere imported by their European overlords13. It is also in these same hinterlandsthat EduardoMondlane, aMozambican who graduated fromOberlin Collegein 1953, took his PhD from Northwestern University, conducted research atHarvard, worked for the United Nations and taught at Syracuse University,founded Frelimo in 1962 and took part in one of the first attacks on a Portugueseguard post, killing two men himself 14.

Clearly, the countryside in and around such places as Chicualacuala was alocus of immense tension. Given the fact that so much of the fighting thatwracked Mozambique from the 1970s to the 1990s took place there ratherthan in Maputo, one can hypothesize that it is this rural Mozambique at least

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as much as the urban Mozambique in which it was created, that The Bird thatWants to Survive references. This hypothesis is supported in part by the artistspersonal history.While he does not come from the hinterlands himself, Fiel hailsnot from Maputo but from Biera, Mozambiques second port city, and thecountryside has played a significant role in his life since 1986. His brotherwas imprisoned and subsequently conscripted against his will in Renamosarmy. For five years he was forced to fight in the hinterlands, leaving Fiel, thena teenager, to tend to his mother and three sisters well being. The war in thehinterlands made him a head of household long before he was prepared tobecome one 15.

Direct references to the economic and physical violence visited by thePortuguese on the people of the hinterlands appear in Fiels work, addingfurther weight still to the suggestion that The Bird that Wants to Survive speaksof the Mozambican countryside and its inhabitants. In one of his sculpturesdepicting a musician, a central feature is a shape of hat that the sculptor iden-tifies specifically as a cotton pickers head covering 16 (see illustrations11 and 12). The contrast between hat and instrument, the former a bulky

8. I. Bray, Chicualacuala: Life on the Frontline, Oxford, Oxfam, 1987.9. On private armies and their deployment in Southern Africa in the 1980s and 1990s, see inter alia:R. Bangas, De la guerre au maintien de la paix. Le nouveau business mercenaire, Critiqueinternationale, n 1, autumn 1998, p. 179-194; J. R. Davis, Fortunes Warriors: Private Armies and the NewWorld Order, Montreal, Douglas et McIntyre, 2000; J. Hooper, Bloodsong: First Hand Accounts of aModernized Private Army in Action, Angola 1993-1995, London, HarperCollins, 2000; A. F. Musah andJ. Kayode Fayemi (eds), Mercenaries: An African Security Dilemma, London, Pluto Press, 2000;W. Singer, Corporate Warrior, op. cit.10. See P. W. Singer, Corporate Warrior, op. cit.; I. Bray, Chicualacuala, op. cit.;.11. It seems beyond doubt that companies originally hired to place mines on Mozambican territory Mechem, Mintech and SCS, for instance profited significantly from the demining efforts andfrom the construction of new infrastructure in the hinterlands. A great deal of money was amassedby such entities in rebuildingwhat they and their like had initially been retained to destroy. This modelhas proven very lucrative and has been used in a number ofAfrican countries by Executive Outcomes,its offshoots and companies functioning on similar business models; see P. W. Singer, CorporateWarrior, op. cit.12. See CIAWorld Factbook, .13. A. Isaacman, Cotton is the Mother of All Poverty: Peasants, Work, and Rural Struggle in ColonialMozambique, Portsmouth, Heinemann, 1996; A. Isaacman, The Tradition of Resistance in Mozambique:The Zambezi Valley, 1850-1921, London, Heinemann, 1976; A. Pitcher, Politics in the Portuguese Empire:The State, Industry, and Cotton, 1926-1974, NewYork, Oxford, Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press,1993.14. E. Mondlane, The Struggle for Mozambique, op. cit.15. Fiel dos Santos, interview by the author, Maputo, August 2004.16. Ibid.

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element that threatens to overwhelm the delicacy of the instrument, a spindlyflute or recorder, suggests a critique of the political and economic system atthe origin of the twowars that brought toMozambique the guns of which thesculpture is made. Entitled The Flutist, this 5 foot tall piece was created inmid 2004. It is primarily composed of AK-47 parts; a rare British EM-1 servesas a stool for the musician depicted. As with The Bird that Wants to Survive,the AK-47 came to Mozambique through Soviet means, while the EM-1, likethe German G3, arrived in the country via Renamo. The cotton pickers hatat the centre of the composition concretely references policies whereby thePortuguese forced change in the agricultural system of Mozambique and, inthe process, wrecked local economies.

The capital, where Fiel was living at the time of the 1978-1992 war, was notuntouched by the conflicts that decimated the hinterland. Though relativelylittle fighting took place there, Maputo too was a locus of tension. The clashbetween local needs and Euro-American privilege and greedwas, and remains,evident there.At the time Ian Braywas documenting the hinterlands, numerousphotographs were taken in the main city of sites such as the Hotel Polana,Mozambiques premier resort, its patrons sitting by a luxurious swimmingpool overlooking the citys beautiful coastline. A few miles away, but care-fully hidden fromWestern eyes, was Xipapanini, one ofMaputos many slums,in which a significant number of the capitals inhabitants dwelled. Suchneighborhoods, devoid of themost basic amenities, are situated away from thecoast, in distinctly less pleasant surroundings. Tens of thousands of men,women and children were forced to relocate there by the Portuguese colonialauthorities; they and their descendants continue to live in these spaces, out ofsight of tourists and wealthy Mozambicans. Under colonial rule, the livingconditions in these outlying areas were catastrophic; the two wars renderedthemmore catastrophic still. Structural adjustment policies imposed by the IMFand World Bank are likely to make them worse 17.

The juxtaposition of spaces of luxury in the heart of Maputo with places ofmisery on its outskirts raises a complex and troubling set of questions, relatingdirectly to Fiels work. Like Bertina Lopes, Malangatana andAlberto ChissanoMozamiques most famous artists, all of who have worked, at one time orother, with theNcleo deArte collective 18 Fiel relies on businessmen, govern-ment officials, foreign institutions and dealers for an income. To what extentdoes this reliance weaken, by in effect commodifying, the ideas at the heartof his work? Can the critique that underlies pieces like The Bird that Wants toSurvive of war, the business interests that fuel it, and the failures of contem-poraryMozambique to cater to many of its inhabitants most basic needs beas powerful or effective as the artist would like it to be when, to have his

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sculpture exhibited, hemust call on precisely the types of business and politicalinterests whose motives his work calls into question?

When exhibiting, Fiel has made every effort to keep a strong sense of com-munity surrounding the work. This has certainly been the case at the NcleodeArte, which is a communal space, open to all artists in the city and predicatedon an ethos of collaboration. Abroad as well, when exhibiting internationally,Fiel has sought spaces congenial to the ethical underpinnings of his work. InLondon, for instance, for an exhibition of his work held in 1992, he specificallychose the Oxo Gallery for its cooperative approach. Rather than a galleryin the pure, commercial sense of the word, Oxo is a rentable space in whichartists are given leave to exhibit their work as they please; so long as theyleave the space in the condition they found it, they have carte blanche 19.Managed by someone with an exceptional eye, but less concerned with thecommercial aspects of arts sales that the average gallery, Oxo is anything butan ordinary arena for the exhibition of art. Yet, still, the problem remainsthat, to produce and show his art, Fiel, like other artists, is dependant on(mostly European or, in any event, white) patrons: he requires their funding.The conundrum, of course, is not his alone; similar difficulties, pecuniary andthus ethical, face all producers of politically engaged art.

There seems little doubt that Fiel is aware of the impact that the complexitiesthat plague his country have on the art he produces in its capital city. Forcesof disjuncture and continuity, revolution and compromise, violence and peaceare central to his work, as is the realization that between these there is oftenlittle in the way of clear-cut boundaries. The conditions under which he mustwork, depending as we have seen on private business interests, underscore theporosity of these boundaries and add a significant layer of complexity to hiswork. In the 1980s, Renamo significantly weakened Mozambiques Marxiststate, which formore than a decade had provided its citizenswith a functioninggovernment. As a result, the Mozambican government was forced to startprivatizing both industry and property. Renamo, in this setting, served a dual

17. J. Hanlon, Peace Without Profit: How the IMF Blocks Rebuilding inMozambique, Oxford, Portsmouth,James Currey, Heinemann, 1996.18. E. Alpers, Representation and historical consciousness in the art of modern Mozambique,Canadian Journal of African Studies, vol. 22, n 1, 1988, p. 73-94; A. Sachs, Images of a Revolution: MuralArt inMozambique, Harare, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1983. See also B. Sahlstrm, Political Postersin Ethiopia and Mozambique: Visual Imagery in a Revolutionary Context, Uppsala, Almqvist et WiksellInternational, 1990.19. See .

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function; in addition to keeping Frelimo from ousting forces opposed to theSoviet Union, it sought to keep the Marxist model of government at a saferemove from SouthAfrica. Its primary goal in this later regard was to deprivetheAfricanNational Congress of a valuable ally and staging ground for attackson theApartheid regime. Throughmeasures like the IncomatiAccord 20, SouthAfrica and its US backers kept Mozambique from being more influential inneighboring counties than it would otherwise have been. These interventionsby neo-colonial powers have had a lasting effect on Mozambique, which canbe seen to shape Fiels work. Arguably, Fiel has maintained the true spirit ofFrelimo in The Bird that Wants to Survive, by taking extra precautions to ensurethat evenwhen the piece is exhibited in Europe it maintains a sense of Frelimoscommunity based, cooperative Marxist-inspired past.

But the bird also embodies compromise that of working with key sectorsof the newly privatized Mozambique which Fiel sees as an essential step inallowing the people ofMozambique to stride forward as does his bird. The latterpoint is underscored by Fiels current stance on the political structure of hiscountry. Asked which political party he would vote for in the presidentialelections of November 2004, he, like his colleague Hilrio Nhatugueja,responded that he would opt for Renamo. Renamos candidate, AfonsoDhlakama, he feels, is better equipped to lead Mozambique into the future.Clearly, Fiel is aware that his country, like his bird, is poised at a point ofcomplex and fragile equilibrium 21.

Shifts: Formal and Conceptual Developments

As a general proposition, Fiels engagement with his work, from a formaland symbolic standpoint, has been one of increasing refinement over time. Thisis suggested by a close analysis of the structure of his pieces. Focusing onhow Fiels pieces were made, one comes to the conclusion that, over the pasteight to ten years, he has acquired an increasingly specialized knowledge ofthematerials withwhich heworks. This in turn has ushered in the artists workan increasingly detailed understanding of anatomy. The result is a collectionof work whose growing complexity mirrors the artists increasingly refinedunderstanding of the cultural context in which he is at work.

Over time, Fiels work has undergone significant transformations. A keydevelopment involves the weapons from which his works are made. Earlyworks, such as The Bird that Wants to Survive, are composed of large parts ofindividual guns (an entire butt or handle, for instance). Later pieces, like TheFlutist, turn to smaller components, resulting in increasingly complex assem-blages.Weapons are gradually broken down deconstructed to create images

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of human and animal bodies that are more and more intricate. This requiresthe artist to work more closely than he did initially with organizations over-seeing the decommissioning of guns in the hinterlands, making specificrequests as to how given types of weapons are dismantled to ensure that spe-cific parts are available for re-use in the sculptural process. In one very recentseries of pieces, for example, Fiel and his assistants use large numbers ofAK-47 sights to depict birds feathers; making sure the sight remains intactduring the decommissioning of a weapon requires cutting the gun at anunusual point, a practice developed and passed on to the decomissioners byFiel and his team.

A trio of sculptures shows how Fiels work has evolved (see illustrations 13,14 and 15). The first, created in 1998, belongs to a series entitled Dancarino(Small Dancer). This an other pieces in the series are made of large gunparts. AK-47 barrels form the figures thighs and AK forward handles theupper body. The petals of a bouquet of roses held by the dancer are createdfrom heat-dispersing shells that surround the barrels of Soviet PPSH sub-machine guns (more commonly known as a Tommy guns). A secondsculpture, created the year after The Bird that Wants to Survive, is part of thePassaro (Bird) series. This is best described as a transitional piece. It incor-porates numerous aspects of Fiels latest work, such as feathers emulated bysights, yet also some aspects of his earlier work, notably the depiction of bodyparts (a trunk, a thigh) with large parts of individual weapons. The head ismade from a Spanish Star-D series pistol, a type of gun first manufacturedin 1911. A third piece, also from the Passaro series but created later, at theend of 2000, demonstrates Fiels growing knowledge of the structure of gunsand his increasingly refined use of weapons parts. Not only AK sights (usedhere as well to emulate feathers), but alsoAK springs (depicting feathers too,but of distinct kind), pistons (for legs) and a bayonet (for the beak) are employed.

In mid 2004, Fiel and a group of artists with whom he works at Ncleo deArte received a commission to create a sculpture from discarded weapons to

20. In 1984, Mozambique signed a non-aggression pact, the Incomati accord, with South Africa; theterms of the pact prohibited South African support of Renamo and Mozambican support of theAfrican National Congress. Mozambique accused SouthAfrica of violating the accord, and fightingcontinued between the government and Renamo throughout the 1980s. In 1986, Mozambiquesleader Samora Machel was killed in a South African engineered plane crash and succeeded byJoaquim Chissano. Chissano was voted out of power in November 2004.Some collaboration was possible, however, between revolutionary movements in the region, despiteSouth African and American intervention. A case in point is Zanu, which in the 1970s made use ofthe eastern hinterlands of Mozambique as a rearward base.21. Fiel dos Santos and Hilrio Nhatugueja, interview by the author, Maputo, August 2004.

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be placed in the entrance of the British Museum in London. Entitled The Treeof Life, the piece was installed in January 2004 22. It stands some 10 feet tall andis 12.5 feet wide.Made of small, precisely cut away and intricately welded partsfromAK-47s and Soviet PPSH assault rifles, this monumental sculpture showsFiels work at its most refined to date. The trees delicate leaves, the elegantsilhouette of its branches and the highly tactile quality of its bark demonstratethe artists mastery over the gun as a sculptural medium. Conceptually,The Tree of Life brings to the fore social and political issues of concern to Fiel.Addressed through previous pieces, in this work these issues come to the forein complex and original ways.

For inspiration in creating The Tree of Life, Fiel turned to a genre of statuarydeveloped in the second half of the 20th century by Makonde artists of north-easternMozambique and adjacent Tanzania 23. In so doing, he was privilegingan approach to art initiated by Frelimo and, thus, as with choices he has madeto foster a communal spirit in the production and exhibition of his pieces,was creating art meant to reflect the early ideals of the liberation movement.In turning toMakondemodels Fiel was also patterning himself on an art formknown for its independent spirit; this too recalls stances he has taken in thepast, notably on governmental politics. While, as we shall see in more detailbelow, in the past a number of keyMakonde carvers associated with the genreof statuary on which The Tree of Life is based worked closely with Frelimo, inmore recent years they have been openly critical of the party, suggesting thatperhaps other routes should be explored to bring prosperity and well-beingto the country.

Makonde wood carving is a dynamic sculptural tradition, continuallyevolving to suit the needs of its creators and patrons 24. It is best known for twodistinct genres of sculptures: 1) masks and female figures celebrating theancestors of given clans, commissioned for use in initiation rituals (veryfine examples of these, dating from the late 19th and early 20th century, can beseen, notably, at the Museum fr Vlkerkunde in Hamburg); 2) carvingsknown as ujamaa towers: sculptures depicting groups of entwined humanfigures shown standing, sitting, crouching and hanging. Over the past eightto nine decades, Makonde sculpture has been characterized by a remarkableability of its practitioners to respond to and experiment with rapidly changingsocial and political situations. As early as the 1920s, Makonde carvers wereengaged in a complex dialogue with European patrons, developing novelstyles and approaches to satisfy a burgeoning market in tourist arts whilecontinuing to work for local communities and clients. In the 1950s, manyMakonde villagers fled PortugueseMozambique forwhatwas then Tanganyika.There, they witnessed the success of a movement for national liberation that

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culminated, in 1961, with independence fromGreat Britain. In this setting, manyMakonde immigrants were exposed to and actively participated in the emer-gence of Frelimo.

Art played a significant role in Frelimos fight to free Mozambique fromPortuguese rule:

After initiating its campaign against the Portuguese in 1964 [writes Harry West], Frelimotook concerted steps to ensure that artists remaining in theMozambican interior continuedtheir work The Front eventually organized cooperatives for sculptors that allowed themto obtain their timber supply collectively, keep their costs down, and work and bargaintogether to earn a better price. Some sculptures were marketed through the internationalsolidarity networks which supported the Frelimo campaign. Proceeds were used sometimesto support the Frelimo organization and sometimes merely to meet the needs of sculptorsand their families, but, in any case, international marketing drew world attention andsympathy to the Mozambican nationalist cause. This patronage ensured the productionof works most supportive of the nationalist objective. Those expressing opposition toPortuguese rule would become images of popular resistance and, eventually, part of aMozambican national consciousness 25.

Ujamaa towers, also known as Trees of Life, were developed in this context.Carved from logs whose circular shape they reflect, theymeasure between oneand eight feet and are either hollow, in which case the figures of which theyare made form an intricate latticework, or solid, with figures carved in reliefon the surface of the sculpture. Drawing on research undertaken by EdwardAlpers, West gives the following description of their form and meaning:

Complex and technically difficult, the power ofUjamaa towers lies in the social bond theyrepresent and the communal values they assert.Ujamaa is the Kiswahili term for socialismthat was employed by the Tanzanian (formerly Tanganyikan) government, which hosted

22. See .23. Fiel dos Santos, interview with the author, August 2004.24. The following overview of Makonde sculpture draws on E. Alpers, The role of culture in theliberation of Mozambique, Ufahumu, vol. 12, n 3, 1983, p. 143-190; E. Alpers, Representation andhistorical consciousness in the art of modern Mozambique, in B. Jewsiewicki (ed.), Art and Politicsin Black Africa, Ottawa, Association canadienne des tudes africaines, 1989, p. 73-94; ministre de laCoopration et du Dveloppement and Association franaise pour laction artistique (Afaa), ArtMakond. Tradition et modernit, Paris, Afaa, 1989; S. Kasfir, Patronage andMakonde carvers,AfricanArts, vol. 13, n 3, 1979, p. 67-91.25. H. West, Dealing with the devil: meaning and the marketplace in Makonde sculpture, AfricanArts, vol. 35, n 3, 2002, p. 32-39.

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the Frelimo guerrilla organization and nurtured its socialist ideology. Intended to symbo-lize national unity, ujamaa towers thus reflected the politics of their time. They [also recal-led and] closely resemble a prewar sculptural genre which portrays the various figureswithin a matrilineal [clan] (likola) and which features a female ancestor atthe base. By superimposing ujamaa unity upon that of the more familiar institution of likola,carvers gave [recognizable physical] shape to the [idea of] nationalism 26.

In so doing, they were working hand in hand with Frelimo. Neither theirwork nor its meaning, however, remained static. Evolving with the countryspolitical situation, as war receded and Frelimo became an established presenceinMozambican governmental politics, the work ofUjamaa sculptors began toregister a critique of the status quo:

[]When carvers wished to suggest [] that Frelimo had failed to honor promises madeto its supporters during the guerilla war, they produced sculptures whose didactic potentialwas as strong as the figures once used in initiation rites: the figures in these ujamaatowers grimaced where they had once smiled, and kicked one another where they hadonce embraced 27.

Fiels Tree of Life draws on the rich political history of the modernMakondecarvingmovement andmelds this withmore recent history andwith thematicconcerns explored by the artistic movement to which he himself belongs.In so doing, The Tree of Life brings to the fore issues and forces central to thepolitical, social and cultural life of contemporary Mozambique.

To emulate nature with unnatural objects so as to inspire dialogue: this,Fiel says, is his project 28. The works presented in these pages fulfill this goalwith considerable success. They bothmemorialize and prompt reflection aboutthe two wars that tore Mozambique apart for the better part of the 1970s,1980s and 1990s and suggest constructive approaches to healing the deepwounds they caused.

In order for them to continue serving this purpose, and for the genre towhichthey belong to grow formally and conceptually, it is essential that they beexhibited inMozambique, to aMozambican and, more broadly, to a Southernand East African public. To date, this has been the case. The Bird that Wants toSurvive has been shown on some ten occasions in Maputo, at Ncleo de Arteand the French Cultural Centre, both in the heart of the city. After a five-yearrun at the BritishMuseum, The Tree of Lifewill be returning to theMozambicancapital, where it will be put on permanent display. Such a focus on exhibitinglocally works created in the city has played a key role in the development ofmodern and contemporary art in Mozambique.

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In this setting, the Ncleo de Arte has had a central part. Founded in 1948under colonial rule, it was originally a space for European artists and audiencesonly. In the years leading up to independence, it gradually opened its doorsto African creators. It is there that Mozambiques best known artist, Malan-gatana, had his first exhibition, in 1961.With independence proper in 1975, theNcleo emerged as amajor site for nationalist cultural production. The Frelimogovernment, under President Samora Machel, entrusted the collective with avast publicmurals project, symbolizing the close link of the liberationmovementwith the local art world. During the second war, from 1978 to 1992, activitiesat the Ncleo came to a halt. During the war, a new generation of artistsemerged, with fewer ties to Frelimo that its predecessor. Members of this newgeneration distanced themselves from theNucleo, founding spaces such as theHADgallery, which, from 1985 to 1990, ran a festival called Arte na Empressa.In the 1990s, HAD closed its doors and the Ncleo made a comeback. It wasbrought back to life by a third generation of artists, in what is widely seen asa symbol of the countrys return to freedom. The collective today counts overone hundred artists and regularly organizes exhibitions and workshops 29.

In years to come, at the Ncleo, it is likely that the Mozambican recycledweapons sculpture movement will continue to grow, resulting in novel andthought-provoking works

Dana Elmquist

UCLA, Los Angeles

26. Ibid.27. Ibid. See alsoM. Stephen, Makonde: sculpture as political commentary, Review of African PoliticalEconomy, n 48, 1990, p. 106-115.28. Fiel dos Santos, interview with the author, Maputo, August 2004.29. T. Boutoux and C. Vincent, Ncleo de Arte, in Africa Remix : lArt contemporain dun continent,Paris, Adagp, Centre national dart et de culture Georges-Pompidou, 2005, p. 272.

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elmquist, dana.__ a bird cloaked in guns post-conflict sculpture from maputo by dana elmquist dana...

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