Svikiro in Shona culture means:
One who mediates between the spiritual and human world, receiving visions in dreams, performs healing rituals and serves as a messenger to the Ancestors.
Svikiro is an immersive film project/series by Zimbabwean-Scottish, Glasgow-based visual artist and curator, Sekai Machache.
Commissioned by Mount Stuart Trust, Svikiro utilises academic, visual, and embodied research at Mount Stuart house, collections and archives to counter ongoing erasure of a complex oracular culture that is profoundly connected to envisioning the future. This series of short films will support experimental and innovative storytelling, suggesting alternative readings of past and present, and proffering a model for a decolonised future archive built on collaboration.
These films will comprise performances in dance and song by invited artists such as Alberta Whittle, Mele Broomes,and Eyve Madyise who are all adorned in beautiful bespoke costumes created in collaboration with Fiona Catherine Powell.
With themes of hyper visibility and invisibility, erasure and existence, apparitions and traces; Machache has succeeded in curating an emotive display that offers us glimpses of the diasporic experience of familial severing and habitual longing. Machache does this, while utilising literary and symbolic references, in a stunning showcase of multidisciplinary skill and collective visioning. At Mount Stuart these themes resonate with the spiritual enquiry of the Third Marquess of Bute and his embedding of religious, astrological, and mythological iconography in the architecture, decoration and fabric of the house.
Performers / Collaborators
Alberta Whittle (gestural performance)
Mele Broomes (dance performance)
Eyve Madyise (musical performance)
Trisha Margolis (musical performance)
Esther Swift (harp performance)
Zethu Maseko (mbira performance)
Fiona Powell (costumes)
Gigi Gumbimura (Hair)
Adebusola Ramsay (research assistance, voiceovers)
Chris Ramsay (sound tech)
Carine Barinia (production assistance)
Gillian Katungi (musical consultancy)
Rhea Lewis (production consultancy)
Tilda Williams-Kelly (support work / assistance / storyboards)
Filmed, Photographed and Edited by Ambroise Leclerc of Paradax Period, Washington Gwande and Douglas Tyrell Bunge
Directed, produced, researched, written and conceptualised by Sekai Machache.
Special thanks to Sophie Chrichton-Stuart, Morven Gregor, Talbot Rice Gallery and
Patricia Fleming Gallery
Dedicated to the memory of Patricia Maria McKay
Mutambi I & II, 2023: Film duration 5mins 42secs
Mutambi I and II are part of a broader body of work titled Svikiro, which was commissioned by Mount Stuart, the grand Victorian country house on the Isle of Bute.
Mutambi, meaning ‘The Dancer’ - in Shona, the artist’s mother tongue - The project draws from Machache’s desire to reconnect with spiritual practices from her culture to reverse the erasure of the various indigenous systems of knowledge of her heritage.
It is part of a broader body of work titled Svikiro, which was commissioned by Mount Stuart, the grand Victorian country house on the Isle of Bute.
A collaborative project, the video centres upon a dance performance by Mele Broomes who moves around the opulent interior of the house, and its dense, verdant gardens. This both channels the mythological and astrological symbolism built into the architecture of the space, whilst suggesting the opening out of a space for decolonising possibilities. Rituals in Shona culture would see a gifted individual use art and dance to support collective healing.
Here, Broomes responds to the original poem by Machache, also titled Mutambi. Machache and Broomes have expertly transcended storytelling techniques through embodied movement and spoken word. Powell and Machache’s costume design further exemplifies the running themes of the film. Broomes’ jacket, hand-appliquéd by Powell, is reminiscent of the upperclassmen and Marques’ whose portraits hang in the halls of Mount Stuart.
Mutambi
She calibrates her mood in hues of blue
Illuminates herself in gold and yellow
Wraps wounds and closes stitches
Sewn with red and white threads
Dancing…
Bleeds ultraviolet beads of sweat
translucent on her gilded skin
That shimmers in the pale green haze
An apparition
Distorted by time and yet ever present
In the halls and orchards
Enlivened in the stone work
Embedded in the soil that sifts underfoot
Early..
She rises
Tends to earthen beds with new and old forgotten seeds
Revives poetics in her footsteps
Twirling…
Round and round a cascade of flowers
Mandala shaped and strewn in circles
Anklets rattling as she moves
Smooth and subtle as the wind
Reminiscent of humming bees…
As tiny birds collect themselves
Around the plumes and beaded furrows of her skirts
Lapping clear and crystalline waters
From the curvature of her spine
Adorned with Departes…
Built like regal waves upon her scalp
That rise firm and perpendicular
Meeting at the corners of her brow
Falling…
Bones twisting in confused stillness
Redacted pages from the archives
What is lost is not forgotten
Forgotten words that can’t be lost
Utterances clear as pitch black sunset
Streaming over temperate clouds
Collecting dust between the dimples on her heels
Svikiro Photography
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Poised Blue
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Mutambi
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Waking the Dead
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Present Existence
Solo Exhibition
Mount Stuart Arts Programme Autumn 2023
Documentation Photo Credit: Keith Hunter
