Douglas Shawu

Douglas Shawu is born on the 9th of October 1978 at Tengenenge farm, belonging to the Nzou Samanyanga (elephant) totem of the Korekore tribe. At first, his father was employed at Tengenenge farm before being transferred to Mabubu farm, a few kilometers from Tengenenge. In 1992 his father passed away after a long period of illness. Douglas stopped schooling due to lacking financial support. Consequently at the age of sixteen he was employed at Tyco as a farm clerk in 1994. In order to raise extra income, he was involved in poultry, buying and selling fish and clothes from Harare.

“I used to do stones on my spare time, getting raw stones from Tiaseka farm which was just but a few meters away from my work place, however there was a man by the name Clever Gangarahwe who was a field worker at Tyco and he was also a sculptor at Tengenenge art community. It was through stone sculpting that he went to Europe where he was doing some workshops and exhibitions, later he came back with a motor vehicle which he showed to me upon his return to the farm. It inspired me to start working on stones’

In 1996 he moved to Mangondo village where his brother was living. From there he used to go back and forth to Tengenenge Art Community, where the late Bakari Manzi was in charge of training him how to grip tools and to produce sharp outlook on a stone.
Having been exposed to sculpting through his father and his brother Felix, who both used to sculpt, stone carving was easily learnt:

“I was inspired by my family to start sculpting, it was easy for me to start sculpting because my family members were sculptors and due to the fact that I had long wished to became a sculptor”.

In 1996, he came to Tengenenge and became a permanent artist. In the year 2005, he met an American customer who took him to Harare for workshops. He left Tengenenge mainly due to quarrels between him and Chairos Muchembere, the director of that time at Tengenenge,. However, soon after, Douglas returned back to the gallery. In 2005, he went to the city of Chitungwiza and came out with a prize in an AGIO competition that was sponsored by Chaw. In the same year as well as in 2006 he won a prize in an exhibition at Tengenenge gallery organized by the Korean delegation to Zimbabwe.

Sculptures of Douglas Shawu