Dreams: Kumbirai Makumbe
This film conceived by the artist, shows the prophetic power of dreams, which can be more than just an accumulation of the detritus of our daily lives.
This film conceived by the artist, shows the prophetic power of dreams, which can be more than just an accumulation of the detritus of our daily lives.
- What is your name and how would you describe what you do?
Kumbirai Makumbe: My name is Kumbirai Makumbe and I’m a Zimbabwean new-media artist based in London. Using sculpture, audio-visual digital installation, image and video, I continually interrogate the multi-dimensionality of blackness, queerness, transcendence and ‘in-betweeness’.
Through world-building and the use of speculative science fiction narratives, I place significant efforts into exploring alternative modes of being and thinking that could negate ideologies inhibiting a ‘needed’ future. I repeatedly bring elements from the digital worlds and spaces I’ve forged into IRL spaces, through 3D printing, which I see as a crucial practice akin to terraforming. I’m enticed by the materiality and malleability of digital matter and the infinite possibilities of its employability.
- What's your background?
KM: I’m a Zimbabwean trans, non-binary artist currently residing in London.
- What inspires you?
KM: Seemingly unintelligible feelings and emotions that demand to be felt. It’s the challenge of trying to find a language/the language or give language to these feelings that fuels me. Constantly striving to make the currently intangible tangible.
- What is the ambition behind your practice?
KM: I don't have a singular ambition. My goal(s) constantly shift, it will continue to and I love that.
What did you hope to convey with your Bodies Of Knowledge film?
KM: I went in with the intention of communicating that dreams could be more than just an accumulation of the detritus of our daily lives. More than just a mangled mix of emotions we’ve recently experienced or faces we’ve passed by and unknowingly memorised. They could be more.
My starting point was the memory of my mother telling me how dreams are prophetic and there’s always something to be deduced from them. She views the body as somewhat as a vessel for messages of guidance sent from a higher power.
