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ON ART

Portrayer of social phenomenon, separator of class
Distinguisher of orientations, extinguisher of opposite mindsets
Setter of collective thought, respecter of individual rebellion
You define what society sees not, yet you see what society cannot define

Meanderings of power are concentrated in your collections
Collectors delineate what you will be worth and mean
In passages of power you institutionalise ideology and culture
In ideological passages you define power relations
Your survival is but a question of affordability and promotion

Generations die and yet you revive them into the present
You are capital to the rich, and the capital of the poor
Social cohesion capitalises you, economic coercion recapitalises your character
Wall silence gets broken once you are hung, yet you hang wall makers
Aesthetics cope with your impositions whilst you impose cultural hope

Fortune is painted through your many dots and curves
Every time you appear you dispense harmonious melody
Born by imaginations but your death is both appreciation and rejection
As you end life with your creator you get born in the hearts of the appreciative
In the realm of appreciation you are eternal and definitively timeless

The powerful succumb to your force of exposure,
The weak find solace in both your beauty and message
Portraiture is to you an ideological conduit to unknown freedoms
Social co-existence can be distorted or balanced through you
As an artefact you uncompromisingly tell stories of all eras you were created

From Mapunguwe to Cradle of mankind
From Italian renaissance to Timbuktu Chronicles
From Picasso to Sekoto; From Yeats to Gibran
From Italy’s Michelangelo to Zimbabwe’s Ajasi Alam
From Shakespeare to Eskia Mphahlele through to Ngugi

You therefore speak appreciation to power yet power can restrict you
Politics is the picture you paint and hang on walled polities
Economic systems notarize your value and you devalue corresponding collaterals
Without you history is incomplete and with history you remain incomplete
You are a mystery; you are art whence you build cultures from which societies are built

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