Gender conversations in Zimbabwe: A precursor of male gaze in visual art practices

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Date
2020Author
Dziwa, Dairai D.
Postma, Louise
Combrink, Louisemarie
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Masculine hegemonic predisposition dominates the gender culture in Zimbabwe. From this
perspective, the notion of the male gaze entails that visual interpretation, amongst other
things, at encoding and decoding levels is consequently performed with a specific hegemonic
‘lens’. It follows that much of visual art, films and advertisements are created to please and
reinforce a male-biased perspective which renders women powerless and subordinate. In
the visual arts, this is particularly evident in the manner that the representation of space
reflect this bias. Guided by critical phenomenology, this study adopted an interpretive
methodology informed by decolonial views to explore and challenge gender identity
constructions in visual culture. Engagement with gender literature and visual discourse
analysis revealed the demeaning effects of patriarchy and also coloniality on women in
much of Zimbabwean art. The discourse of decolonial activist art opposes the male gaze and
aims to disrupt the power dynamics which position women to be inferior or less visible in
the public art space. This type of activist art is concerned with the possible critical
transformative impact of the visual arts in contesting and resisting gender dichotomy,
imbalances and inequality.
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- TD: 2020 Volume 16 [37]