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Bongani Ndlovu, Showbiz Correspondent
NATIONAL Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo regional director Butholezwe Nyathi says the ongoing Covid-19 induced lockdown is presenting an opportunity for visual artistes to embrace digital technology as it will open more doors for them.

Last year, visual artistes could not exhibit because the gallery was closed for the better part of the year as part of measures by Government to curb the spread of Covid-19. This saw most of them not being able to work on their artefacts.

They lost out on business as well as tourists, who would from time to time buy their products, could not visit the gallery because borders were closed.

In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, most art forms migrated from the physical to digital, but it was difficult for visual artists to do so.

In all this gloom, Nyathi said this actually is an opportunity for visual artists to embrace digitalisation of their art.

“I’m happier to have the exhibitions online because people aren’t coming to the gallery physically. I’m actually working on a mechanism to track the geographical location of people who’re viewing our exhibitions online as well as the virtual tour.

“We know with that international and regional exposure, our artists stand a better chance to be commissioned to then produce works of art that they can always send,” said Nyathi.

He said Covid-19 lockdowns have actually accelerated the digitisation of visual art and artists at the gallery are embracing it.

“The situation may look very gloomy for now, but I’m very happy that ultimately, it’s accelerating the pace of digitisation. I don’t think there’s a visual artist anywhere who needs to be convinced on why they need to be visible online,” said Nyathi.

The gallery director said they are now working on training their artists on things such as website creation and how to post their content online.

“We want to train our artistes on search engine optimisation, how to set up a website, posting content and how they can take pictures. Just that technical support that they need.

“We want them to have these accounts on social media and grow them either organically or through paid promotion,” he said.

He said at first, it was not easy to convince some artists and staff to embrace the digital trajectory that the gallery wanted to take.

“When we started, there was resistance, misunderstanding and doubt, which is natural when you want to introduce change. When the first lockdown came, I was no longer convincing the staff and artists on why we need to pursue digital art. It became the only avenue to keep the institution viable to some extent.

“We then did a virtual tour of the exhibitions that we were running during the shutdown so that people who weren’t able to walk into the gallery (due to the closure of gallery), were able to consume the works of art via the virtual tour,” said Nyathi.