Itai Nyama

Itai Nyama is a Zimbabwean sculptor. Itai Nyama is a very rare talent. He approaches stone like a Zen master removing it from its normal realm of mass, weight and gravity into one of wafer thinness, air and lightness.

Background

Itai Nyama was born in 1975 in Zimbabwe. Itai Nyama worked from 1996 to 2000 as an assistant to the renowned sculptor Joseph Muzondo in Harare. Itai Nyama's first own works - predominantly expressive heads - were created under the strong influence of his teacher. But soon he developed his own, unmistakable style, which he himself describes as Open Mind. The expressive, massive heads are opened and let the spiritual enter and step out.^[1]

Due to financial constraints he had to quit school prematurely and took up several jobs until he met sculptor Joseph Muzondo who accepted himas his assistant. After four years of ’apprenticeship’ he left his teacher and together with other artists he founded an art community. For many years the German collector Heike v. Busekist supported and encouraged him to develop his own distinctive style.^[2]

Career

From 2005, Itai developed his next series of Origamis in search of new design options for the hard matter of stone. He works the stone so delicately that it loses the stony, can be folded like paper effortlessly and the abstract, elegant sculptures seem to float.

“I wish to make the impossible possible and fold the stone that has grown for millions of years like paper. Whilst I'm filing it melts away and floats in the air.” Itai Nyama 2006

In his opinion, this gravity-dissolving processing of the stone can only take place in constant dialogue with the stone itself. Itai is of the firm conviction that the finest peculiarities of the stone can only be felt with purely manual work and that the character of the stone helps determine the work process.

When Itai won 1st prize at the KD Sculpture Prize in 2010, the chairman of the jury Tapfuma Gutsa, participant in the 2011 Biennale, described Itai's work:

Itai Nyama is a very rare talent. He stone like a Zen master removing it from its normal realm of mass, weight and gravity into one of wafer thinness, air and lightness. The chances of losing a piece in the process are very high but this is the very excitement that Nyama derives from the medium. It is a marvel watching a large piece of stone planes gracefully revolving in the wind and to hear the almost metallic sound… This writer would talk of the stoniness of stone. Tapfuma Gutsa, 2010

Awards/Exhibitions

2004 second prize of the KD-Sculpture Prize, Harare
2005 Sculptor from Zimbabwe, World Trade Center, Bremen
2006 and 2009 International Sculpture Symposium, Obernkirchen.
2009 ConARTz, Mavambo , Ravensburger Spinnerei, Bielefeld
2010 Gallery Sylvia Bernhardt, Wiesbaden
2010 first prize of the K D- Sculpture Prize, Harare
2011 ConARTz, Stein. Impulses. Contrasts, Gasteig Cultural Center Munich
2011 official guest of the city of Munich, scholarship holder of the Villa Waldberta from 2013 annual group exhibition, Kunsthalle ConARTz, Niederroth
2014 official guest of the city of Munich, artist guest house