By Hassoum Ceesay, The Gambia National Museum
Zina Zoker Zizo is a promising Gambian painter hose exhibition of a dozen acrylic paintings opened last Friday at Blaque Magique Bistro in the Senegambia Strip. Zina’sworks are a rich harvest of realist paintings. ‘Musoor’(headtie in Wolof) is the title of the exhibition. The titles leave no one in doubt that the leitmotif of the exhibition is the Gambian woman.
Indeed, in brilliant colours, pastel and shades, Zina celebrates Gambian womanhood in all her gaity, girth and glory. The mystery, mystic and might of the woman hold sway in these canvases. The young painter and art teacher has created a symphony of colours.
It is a symphony because Zina adeptly matches emotions and colour; thereby conjures up a rich acre of emotions. In his work ‘Hidden Beauty’ the painter brings to life the inanimate virtues and attributes of the Gambian damsel. Each brush stroke, each line, each silhouette matters and speaks through the canvas. In his ‘Stand 4 Her’, the painter bemoans Gender Based Violence, and request for a global attack against this menace against womanhood. This is one painting that is stridently activist and contemporaneous. The artist-writer, painter, sculptor, dancer, composer- is the first activist, the first freedom fighter. Zina is therefore treading hallowed grounds here. His piece ‘Big Eyes’ is dollish, but not infantile.
In his ‘Holy Beauty’, Zina’s canvas becomes alive, and drips with utter feeling. Here the brush goes awry, and this chaos metamorphoses into a cool cascade of colours. But Zina loves of riotous colours, and realism are a feature of Gambian art.
Zina belongs to the new generation of Gambian painters who do not want their message to be obscured by the cubist or abstract modes. His message of the ebullient woman comes out fully without the need to scratch one’s head. This is why in my assessment, Zina’s work reeks of a non-fiction writer instead of an obscurantist poet. His works bring out the message clearly and without equivocation. He can be called a portrait artist. In his piece ‘Standing Tall’, Zina’s use of colour becomes so fecund.
Indeed, fecundity is a topic that runs through several other works where the woman is seen as the ultimate receptacle and follicle without which the Gambian kind would be extinct.
A worthy distinction of Gambian painters across the three generations of Momodou Ceesay(1945-); Njogu Touray(1960-), B. Etu Ndow(died 2013) and up to Zina himself is that they have a penchant for celebrating Gambian read, African womanhood in her greatness and agency. In their works over the past five decades, these painters have always shown that the lot of our women is not poverty, penury or the puerile, but power, pomp and pageant.
Indeed, this is clearly expressed in the title for this exhibition: ‘Musoor’, is synecdoche; it represents more than a head tie, but stands for the multi-tasking, multi-functional and multi vital Gambian woman. Because the ‘Musoor’ can become a purse to keep coins and notes; a waist belt; a beater; and even a rope(weapon) to hang or suffocate!
Zina is a promising artist. His brilliant use of colour(excuse the pun), wax collage, and pencil is noteworthy as is his obsession with the power of womanhood.
The exhibition runs through to July 17 at Latirr Carr’s new mecca of Gambian art at Blaque Magique Cafe off the Senegambia Highway.