When Moffat Takadiwa sees a pile of rubbish—old technology parts, personal care items, clothing—he doesn’t just see a bunch of junk. The Harare, Zimbabwe-based artist has spent the better part of two decades collecting thousands upon thousands of pieces of plastic and metals foraged from landfills near the city’s Mbare neighborhood, where heaps of electronic equipment waste, also known as e-waste, ends up in illicit dump sites. In his studio, vast collections of colorful objects are meticulously sorted into collections.
Takadiwa is known for his elaborate sculptures made from what he describes as “everyday consumer residue”—discarded computer keyboard keys, toothbrush heads, plastic combs, buttons, and more. The colors, textures, and patina of wear and age produce patterns that it’s tempting to describe as “organic,” even though the materials are the opposite.
The artist’s current solo exhibition, The Crown! at Semiose, highlights the tension not only between visual harmony, consumer culture, and waste but also those of what curator Fernanda Brenner describes in the exhibition essay as “the tensions of Africa’s post-colonial afterlife.” Takadiwa describes it as the “colonial hangover.” For instance, afro combs appear throughout the show, “rooted in African traditions and the colonial self-fashioning they forced,” Brenner says. “Once tools for grooming and ritual, these combs now bear the weight of resistance and pride in Black political life.”
Takadiwa’s compositions drape, tapestry-like, with repetitive patterns and textures that alternate between softness and brittleness. From the distance, the details of unique components blur into a fabric-like substrate, but upon closer inspection, nail polish brushes, caps, and keyboard keys in various states of aged yellowing emerge as individual tributes to overconsumption and excess. “The result is beautiful, which is where the trouble begins,” Brenner writes. She continues:
If beauty could settle old scores, the art world would have solved more than it has…Rearranging the materials does not erase their origins. If you have ever pressed ‘delete’ and believed the problem was gone, his work offers a quiet correction. Nothing disappears; it only travels, usually to places like Mbare, where Takadiwa opened his artist-run space in what used to be a colonial beer hall.
The Crown! continues through May 16 in Paris. See more on the artist’s Instagram.
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