Kudzanai ChiuraiIn service to Industry, 2020
‘In service to Industry’ forms part of ‘Paintings and Drawings from the Radical Archive’, a series inspired by Michel Foucault’s 1964 text Madness and Civilisation. In this body of work, Kudzanai Chiurai continues his ongoing investigation into dismantling colonial ideologies by critiquing the persistent expectation that Africans must think, speak, and act within the confines of colonial structures. Styled in the manner of screen-printed propaganda posters from 1970s Rhodesia-Zimbabwe, historically used to challenge white minority rule, the works are collaged with found photographs, letters, and fragments from The Kaffirs Illustrated, a reprinted 19th-century folio of ethnographic watercolours.
Chiurai’s painting practice is a form of visual resistance. Each surface is inscribed with imagined letters attributed to Foucault, reflecting on the use of madness as a colonial construct – one that, in Chiurai’s view, justified imperial conquest and continues to influence the failures of post-colonial African states. Through this process, he transforms the archive into a space for memory, resistance, and speculative narration. This work exemplifies his approach to painting as a tool for confronting historical authority and reclaiming agency. By layering figuration, found material, and text, Chiurai challenges dominant visual languages and proposes new ways of imagining African identities, histories, and futures.
