In Sarungano, which translates in two Shona dialects to mean both the storyteller and the story told, Bickle combines everyday objects with the fragmented text of William Shakespeare's Sonnet 66, which speaks of the poet's weariness of the social and moral injustices of the world. Bickle's manipulation of this classic European text, taught to every Zimbabwean schoolchild, highlights the complex story of European cultural dominance in Africa and pays homage to a generation of African youth caught up in the turbulence of Zimbabwe's history.
Through its size, scale and palette, this work is intended as a memorial, commemorating suffering and the broken fragments of lost lives. In Shona tradition, grieving relatives leave the personal objects of the deceased shattered upon the grave. Some of Bickle's objects are filled with salt or sand as a tribute to the missing-the salt emphasizing pain and the earth representing release from worldly suffering.
Sonnet 66
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly doctor-like controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.
-William Shakespeare
Description:
12 panels in steel with mixed media applications.
Exhibition History:
Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., April 22, 2013-February 23, 2014; Fowler Museum at UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles, April 19-September 14, 2014
TEXTures: Word and Symbol in Contemporary African Art, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., February 11-September 4, 2005
Published References:
Kreamer, Christine, Mary Nooter Roberts, Elizabeth Harney and Allyson Purpura. 2007. Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution; Milan: 5 Continents Editions, pp. 208, 228, no. 18.7, 19.2, 19.3.
Milbourne, Karen E. 2013. Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa. New York: The Monacelli Press; Washington, D.C.: National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, pp. 70-71, nos. 50-51.
Content Statement:
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Image Requests:
High resolution digital images are not available for some objects. For publication quality photography and permissions, please contact the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives at https://africa.si.edu/research/eliot-elisofon-photographic-archives/
Credit Line:
Museum purchase with funds provided by the Kellogg Foundation
