PROJECTS & PROGRAMMES

ABOUT PROJECTS & PROGRAMMES

Mbare Art Space partners with funders, organisations and educational institutions to produce ongoing projects and programmes. MAS facilitates these collaborations which include community-engaged events, architectural renewal projects and artist residencies and exhibitions.

A key component of the programming at MAS is an ongoing artist residency programme. MAS provides artist studio space and mentoring to the next generation of Zimbabwean visual artists.

Mwana Wevhu

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GREEN COLONIALISM

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'IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK'

‘If These Walls Could Talk’ was a dynamic, research-driven, and community-engaged initiative by Mbare Art Space.

This multifaceted project included two workshops, an art residency, and an exhibition, all intended to relearn and reimagine the spaces we inhabit.

The project culminated in this exhibition featuring new works by Joshua Chiundiza and Nothando Chiwanga created during their residency. Spanning various mediums and forms, their artworks delve into the urban history of the colonial beerhall system in Southern Africa and explores people’s experiences, resistance, and resilience.

The project is co-curated by Lifang Zhang and Moffat Takadiwa, and supported by the US Embassy Zimbabwe.

CREATIVE EXCHANGE

The Creative Exchange is a collaborative project that brings together Stellenbosch Academy Honours students and local creatives in a host city to work on a short-term creative brief. The project enables creative problem solving and encourages collaborative design solutions that are context specific and meet the needs of our partners. The purpose of the Creative Exchange is to use peer-to-peer learning as a tool to build relationships between creative spaces, design studios and visual arts institutions in the region. We are interested in growing a creative community by bringing diverse creative skills, backgrounds and cultures to work together on creative projects that are embedded in the context of the host city. Building on six years of experience in engaging in Creative Exchange projects, we have gained insight into the most effective types of collaboration. For this reason, we have decided to return to Harare in 2025 and strengthen the existing relationships we have, as well as

DESIGN BUILD PROJECT

University architecture students in Germany and the USA developed concept ideas and drawings for the Mbare Art Space, in particular the Artlab and coding classroom.

Eight German graduate students spent one month in Harare in August 2023 to execute projects on the stacked shipping container project that had been erected prior to their arrival. Students built work surfaces from sustainably harvested Teak wood offcuts and designed and welded a suspended steel framework to display art.

SOLAR POWER & TECHNOLOGY PROJECT

A former utility room in the tank building was converted to a temporary computer studio for artists. This transformation was a multi-donor collaboration, with support from Culture Fund Zimbabwe, Centragrid Solar, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, STO Foundation, and the Oak Foundation. Opened in March 2022, the new lab runs on solar power and allows artists 24/7 access to the tools of technology: computers, printers, digital imaging, video conference, and wifi.

Corporate partner Liquid Intelligent Technologies donated the first phase of wifi infrastructure at the studios, as well as a monthly high-speed subscription.

RESIDENT ARTISTS