Conclusion: On the Significance of the Njuzu story to the Shona Sculpture Phenomenon

The expansive accounts of the njuzu given above may well be due to the post-independence intensification of commitment to the concept of Shona sculpture in which it is assumed that each Shona sculpture comes with a story and the better and more extensive the cultural account the more interesting and therefore "authentic" the sculpture. It is interesting in that though the discourse in this art world describes these works as spirits in stone this is mere discourse for tourist consumption as no Shona person in their right mind would imagine or try to create (or capture) a spirit in stone -- though they might say so for theatrical purposes to European patrons. It would be anathema to Shona religion for spirits are conceived of as forces like the wind that possess people and that do not inhabit inanimate objects. Consequently this is one particularly clear case of how the Shona discourse of spirit in stone is ethnographic fantasy that speaks more to Western perceptions of Africa and African perceptions of Western perceptions than to the spiritual reality of the discourse as immanent in the sculptures (see Price 1989). Yet such discourses are not simply authenticating mechanisms for they serve, as we see here, as a vital inter-cultural mode of exchange and for re-telling and transmitting African religious beliefs to a European audience as well as for re-affirming forms of local identity (see Myers 1998 for the Australian Pintupi case).

The only case I ever heard of in which any remote superstitious possibility was connected lay in the case in which the elder statesman of Shona sculpture Nicholas Mukomberanwa once sculpted an entirely original conceptualization of a water spirit with a swirling encircling force and central almost demonic eye. Subsequently, and one imagines by pure chance and not attributable to some superstitious reasoning of representation and effect, his son tragically drowned in a river. He did not sculpt another water spirit for a very long time and by 1988/89 when he did, the evolution in his style into a highly aestheticized and refined mode had become very much apparent (see Contemporary African Artists: Changing Tradition 1990:101). To extrapolate mystical significance to the drowning, as one might be drawn to do from a "primitivist" perspective, would be a mystification akin to the original claims that the Shona sculptors poured blood over the sculptures to bring the incarnated spirits of their ancestral Gods alive (see Zilberg 1994). Though such works then provide us access into the artists' experience and cultural beliefs, they are never seen as living spirits in stones in the artists' eyes though European patrons love to see them as such. That the artists' are aware of this and amused by it is given way and lives on in the amused glint in Joseph Ndandarika's eyes during his slightly inebriated description of the njuzu given above.

While Shona sculpture has served, as we see for the case of the njuzu , to convey African religious beliefs to European audiences, the choice of subject is not entirely unmotivated. These choices not only reveal a pride in their own cultural heritage but also reveal a communicative system in which the artists are producing symbolic imagery with the European fascination for the magic and spirituality they perceive as inherent to "authentic" "tribal" African art. Thus while such discourses serve to legitimate the claims of Shona sculpture as having an authenticity based in ethnicity they also speak to the European imagination of Africa as an exotic other with "primitivist" organic connections to nature and the spirit world revealed in their art (see Cousins 1990, Torgovnik 1990). Shona sculpture then, as a vehicle for Shona culture, serves a dual discursive purpose.

Yet over and above these considerations, this form of inter-cultural communication through the arts speaks directly to a historical relation between Europe and Africa in which contemporary African artists are imagined to be bound to religion and ethnicity, to nature and the spirit world, in a different way to modern European artists. Indeed, for avant-garde Zimbabwean sculptors attempting to break into the world of international contemporary art, and set themselves apart from the mainstream, these tropes of ethnicity present a double bind and arguably hinders their ability to gain acceptance in Europe as modern artists in their own rights. Yet Frank McEwen, the first director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, the inspirational figure who first encouraged the sculptors to mine their culture and express their belief systems in stone, believed that it was this connection between art and religion which propelled Shona sculpture into the world of "great" art and which in fact made it relevant as an anti-dote to European formalism (see Polakoff 1972).

True to McEwen's memory, at home in Africa, following the lead of the likes of Joseph Ndandarika and Nicholas Mukomberanwa, many Shona artists now commonly comment that their sculptures will serve to transmit their beliefs to upcoming generations who they fear are loosing touch with Shona culture. But considering the dynamics of the market and appreciation at hand, that future lies in Europe where it is the children of the patrons who will be the ones to learn about the njuzu through these sculptures. Back at home in Africa the ancestral faith continues unaided by ideas expressed in stone but by spirit possession and ritual. There it is the sounds of the mbira, and not the shape of a stone, that call the spirits forth.