DIRE SITUATION IN LOCAL ART INDUSTRY

MBABANE – During a recent open discussion at Yebo Art Gallery, visual artists, sculptors and photographers gathered to address the challenges they face in their field.

Siphilile Magagula, one of the organisers of the discussion, revealed that the main challenge identified was the lack of support for visual art in the kingdom. Magagula mentioned that a detailed report on the challenges and issues discussed during the gathering is currently being prepared by the organisers. This report will shed more light on the specific issues faced by visual artists in Eswatini.

However, this publication had an interview with Magugula, who also confirmed that they will be sharing a more detailed report on the issues which were discussed on the day. When asked about some of the challenges that were discussed during the gathering, she mentioned that there were many and these included that there was little support for visual art in the kingdom. “There are many challenges which will be shared in our upcoming report from the talk, but in short there is not enough support for visual art in the country,” she said.

Brilliance

When asked what their conclusion during the discussions was, she shared that the report will bring it into light. “That will be shared in the report but we can say that the situation is dire,” Magagula said. She further shared that a lot of people do not understand art as they have noticed brilliance from some local artists especially during events which they host. “We can confidently say art isn’t getting enough support. A lot of people do not understand art or see it as a viable career path. From the events we have hosted we see that there’s a lot of brilliant, talented visual artists and the supporters of the events we host for artists have primarily been young people. The youth are really rallying behind artists, however, we need everyone to rally behind art in order for the industry to thrive,” she said.

In May this year, they hosted an exhibition where there were issues of slow market. The exhibition was called ‘Kuyini Photography exhibition’ and was hosted at Yini Loku, where photographers were sent emails the following week after the exhibition to come and collect their work on Wednsday, May 22, as some photographs were not bought. “There has been a great reception of the work, unfortunately very few sales were made but that seem to be the case, the art market is very slow these days unfortunately,” read part of the email. When speaking to Siphilile and asked if things had been promising to pick up, she shared that a few people buy the art. “We are finding less people buying art unfortunately, which are a clear economic indicator,” she said.

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