The National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo opened its doors on 20 November 2025 for SPARKS, the annual exhibition showcasing work produced by its resident artists. The show, long considered an important platform for emerging practitioners, arrived at a moment of reflection for the city’s creative ecosystem. As guest speaker, I highlighted the enduring importance of residency programmes, the need for collaborative frameworks, and the necessity for Bulawayo artists to reclaim their cultural narratives. Yet beyond the ceremony, SPARKS offered a revealing portrait of both promise and urgency within the local art scene.
Residencies are meant to be laboratories of experimentation — spaces where artists challenge themselves and their contexts. The artworks on display indeed carried traces of personal exploration, scattered inquiries, and early sparks of conceptual ambition. They showed that the residency provides a crucial foundation: time, space, and creative freedom.
However, the exhibition also exposed a significant challenge. Many of the works felt tentative, incomplete in their articulation, and lacking strong conceptual anchoring. The visual language suggested that artists were searching, but without clear guidance to shape that search into confident artistic statements. The residency has tremendous potential, yet the final output revealed that several artists appeared unsure of their next developmental steps, signalling a strong need for mentorship and sustained curatorial support.
A recurring observation was a general sense of uncertainty among the resident artists — not in their talent, but in their trajectory. Conversations during the opening reinforced this impression: several artists expressed difficulty in understanding how to refine their ideas, how to position their work critically, or how to move from experimentation to fully realised bodies of work.
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This underscores a broader truth in the Bulawayo art scene: artists cannot grow in isolation. Residencies must be accompanied by structured mentorship, critical reviews, peer-to-peer learning, and exposure to experienced practitioners. Without these, creative sparks risk fading before they become fires.
The Executive Director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Mr. Raphael Chikukwa, noted in his remarks that the NGZ has engaged in new partnerships with The Higher Life Foundation and proudly announced that Zimbabwe will host the CIMAM Conference in 2026 — a major milestone for Zimbabwe’s contemporary art scene.
He also offered pointed advice to the exhibiting artists: to push their ambition further by moving beyond small-scale works and embracing scale, risk, and magnitude. I also echoed the same sentiments because we need to align Zimbabwean art with global contemporary trends where artists use larger formats to create stronger impact, deeper immersion in international exhibitions for more competitive visibility. His observation further highlighted the gap between potential and execution evident throughout SPARKS.
One of the key messages I needed to share was to call for unity among Bulawayo visual artists. In the past 5 years, fragmentation, competition, and silent rivalries have long weakened the city’s creative ecosystem. SPARKS, in its current form, reflects both the vitality and the vulnerability of this community.
The works show that ideas are emerging, but the ecosystem around them needs strengthening:
• More public art.
• More collaborative platforms.
• More research into Bulawayo’s artistic histories.
• More trust from policymakers toward local creatives.
• More spaces for experimentation.
• More investment into independent curators, researchers, and administrators.
Without this, artists remain isolated, working in pockets without the cohesive support that produces world-class art movements.
Looking ahead, and despite the gaps, SPARKS is an important platform. It offers a rare look at early-stage experimentation — the raw, unpolished beginnings of artistic careers. Such exhibitions are valuable because they reveal where support is most needed.
The energy is there. The curiosity is there. The desire to grow is there. What is missing is structured, intentional mentorship, critical dialogue, and professional guidance that can transform sparks into sustainable flames.
I concluded by saying Sparks is a celebration and a challenge. It celebrates the resilience of the residency programme and the ambition of emerging artists in Bulawayo. At the same time, it challenges us — institutions, educators, curators, cultural practitioners, and policymakers — to strengthen the mechanisms that help young artists mature into confident, globally competitive creative voices.
If nurtured properly, the sparks seen here can ignite a new chapter in Bulawayo’s contemporary art story. But without guidance, structure, and unity, they risk disappearing into the shadows of unrealised potential, the days of seeing red stars on the artwork at an exhibition preview need to return.
The responsibility lies with all of us to ensure that the next iteration of this exhibition burns brighter, stronger, and with greater artistic conviction. Curated by Abigail, Doris Kamupira, and Rinako Shirai a museology volunteer from Japan.
Cliford Zulu is an Independent Curator and Founder the Centre for Contemporary Art Bulawayo Curatorial Project.
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