Posted on March 8, 2010

Amy Schwartzott discusses a Mozambican project's use of recycled weapons to memorialize past wars.

Transformaão de Armas em Enxadas/Transforming Arms into Plowshares: Mozambique's Grassroots Arts Approach to Post-Conflict Resolution

“These materials used to kill people - each bullet [used in my art] saves one life.' This statement by Mozambican artist, Gonãalo Mabunda, came vividly to life as he showed me his weapons art. The power of art became tangible to me in his transformation of recycled weapons. Mabunda's outdoor workspace in Maputo is filled with piles of chopped up AK47s, bullets, and grenades. All were collected through the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), Christian Council of Mozambique's (CCM) project, Transforming Arms into Plowshares/Transformaão de Armas em Enxadas or (TAE). TAE collects and destroys decommissioned weapons from the Mozambican civil war and transforms them into art.

My research investigating the local and global impact of contemporary Mozambican artists using recycled materials as media primarily focuses on TAE. The TAE project's use of recycled weapons to memorialize past wars illustrates an influential grassroots arts project aimed at post-conflict resolution. TAE's innovative approach to reconciliation and memorialization by Mozambicans uses art as an iconic visual reminder, a mnemonic device symbolizing the violence of the civil war. By recycling weapons of war into art, healing and commemoration are achieved in addition to preventing the weapons from killing again. I investigate the impact of TAE as it continues to successfully promote peace eighteen years after the Mozambican civil war, collecting some 600,000 weapons to date.

The theoretical framework for my investigation draws largely from social anthropology and visual culture studies, specifically, the writings of Igor Kopytoff. Kopytoff's seminal essay, 'The Cultural Biography of Things,' focuses on an object's transformation from its initial use through its many lives, providing the basis for my analysis of the incarnations of meaning in a recycled object through its transformation into art. With these Mozambican artworks created from weapons, I am interested in the materiality of the original forms of the weapons and the fact they are artifacts of Mozambique's protracted conflicts. The Mozambican civil war (1977-1992) directly followed the nation's battle for more than a decade for independence from Portuguese colonial rule. This bloody conflict precipitated economic collapse, famine, nearly one million war-related casualties and the displacement of several million civilians.

TAE, founded in 1995 by Bishop Dom Dinis Sengulane, was inspired within CCM workshops aimed at establishing peace and democracy following the General Peace Agreement in Rome in 1992. He told me that in creating TAE he applied principles located in the Bible, ...and they shall beat their swords into plowshares. And their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation neither shall they learn war any more.' A closer reading of this verse reveals not only a desire to promote peace, but a pervasive theme in the TAE arts of Mozambique is revealed - transformation through recycling.

TAE's process of transforming weapons into art consists of multiple steps: collecting weapons, making them unusable, and giving an instrument of production in exchange for the collected weapons as an incentive. The incentives have taken such diverse forms as sewing machines, bicycles, farm implements, seeds, animals, or building supplies. TAE's initial plan was to melt the weapons down and turn them into tools. Ultimately, this process proved too costly and was soon abandoned. Bishop Sengulane views the change as 'Providential,' for it would have altered the visual outcome of the weapons' transformation, permanently disfiguring and erasing their former identities as destructive tools.

TAE's transformation of destroyed weapons into art began in 1997 when Bishop Sengulane held a workshop challenging Mozambican artists to transform weapons into symbols of peace. The only stipulation given to the artists was that they use the weapons to create imagery associated with peace, avoiding violent themes. TAE artists were given the freedom to create.

Mozambique's grassroots approach to peacekeeping and reconciliation has inspired TAE artists to memorialize the past violence of Mozambique's wars through their use of transformed weapons. These visceral artworks are evocative of what TAE Coordinator Boaventura Zita views as central to the focus of TAE, 'to bring peace and to forgive, not forget, and keep on touching the wound that is bleeding.' The TAE artists I have been working with display unique sensibilities in their approaches to invoking the memory of war to move Mozambique and the world forward in peace through remembrance.

Fiel dos Santos' forms focus on naturalism. He is interested in the relationship of the parts to the whole, often revealing the intricacy of the individual materials in his overall constructions. Sensitive in his treatment of form and placement, Fiel's focus on the objecthood of the weapons forces the viewer to intimately connect to the meaning of the weapons and the intrinsic power of violence within each. Fiel's hope for the works he creates for TAE underscores the ethos of the project to disarm both hands AND minds, 'When I work it is to show the people that these materials were killing people. Now with my hands I can show people these guns are never again going to shoot.'

Cristovao 'Kester' Canhavato is currently working on Peace Monument, a public artwork. Originally sited for a busy roundabout in Maputo, Peace Monument will be a massive, nine-meter tall monument constructed of decommissioned weapons, designed as a symbolic place of remembrance of the Mozambican civil war. I have seen the development of this sculpture from its early architectural plans to the preliminary construction of the monument.

Kester's artistic approach is based on his engineering background. His methodological determination in creating design is apparent in his work. Peace Monument is based on imagery symbolizing peace, including a massive dove escaping from a box with a globe on its tail. Encrusted with weapons, these forms will signify an iconic symbol of peace memorializing the conflict of Mozambique and hope for the future. Now in its early stages, I look forward to returning to see the completion of Peace Monument as an important cultural icon in Mozambique. Peace Monument is an apt ending here, as it symbolizes the power of art through the continuation of TAE's grassroots approach at peacekeeping, post-conflict resolution, and transformation.

Amy Schwartzott is a PhD Candidate, School of Art and Art History, University of Florida, USA. Contact her at: zott@ufl.edu