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Some of Dananayi Muwanigwa’s artworks

Tsitsi Ndabambi
Dananayi Muwanigwa changed the face of art drawings by unleashing his 2D artwork at his first ever solo RIMI Digital Exhibition which is running for one week at Batanai Gardens. The exhibition started on Thursday 14 December.

Placing his future vision of the African life on his digital canvas, he explains that he animated the paintings in a software called ‘Adobe After Effects’ then converted the animations to Gifs (Graphic Interchange Formats) which he then made to play when viewed through a smart device using Unity and Vuforia softwares.

The still images then start to make movements and ‘come to life’. Upon entering the exhibition area one would think that people are engaged in a futurist cellphone ritual of some sort with their devices pointed at the Dananayi’s artwork. The difference is he is using technology to make art come to life.

With the naked eye, they are just your usual art paintings with a sparkle hanging on a wall until you use your smart device through a certain application to view it, then it becomes a breathtaking spectacle.

One of these awe-striking framed pictures, entitled Chibhakera, is of a dread-locked woman adorned with a cut flaming red gem on her neck and wearing a modern version of ‘Nhembe’ with all the cleavage showing on her bosom. On her right hand is a steel glove which portrays strength and through the device you see her moving that hand.

She might be taken for a super heroine with a sex appeal at the same time strong enough to tackle her rivals. The 27 year old self-taught artist learnt digital art through E-books, YouTube tutorials as well as trial and error and he has been practicing digital-art and animation for about 5 years.

“The exhibition is a collection of art I have been working on throughout the year. Two months ago I had the opportunity to participate in the Fak’ugesi Digital Art Festival in South Africa where I was exposed to augmented reality and other digital innovations,” he said in an interview.

“My mind was blown away and I decided to spend time learning how I could apply this technology to my paintings,” he said, adding: “It takes an understanding of Augmented Reality which is the overlaying of digital data onto real world spaces (to produce the work). I thoroughly believe Augmented Reality is a serious game-changer and will usher in the 4th industrial revolution. This will forever change how we interact with the world around us,” he emphasised.

He explained stage by stage, how he came up with such comical and uber-creative pictures and masterpieces that can qualify for a Hollywood SCI-Fi movie .

“I first sketch the idea in Photoshop using a Wacom Intuos Drawing tablet before rendering the painting make it look 3 dimensional. I then cut the painting in photo shop and send the file into After Effects for animating then export the file as a Gif and use the original softcopy of the painting as a target that the Augmented Reality app can pick up using an online database called Vuforia,” he explained.

Dananayi’s work was commissioned by the British Council after they made an open call in September. British council representative Sam Harvey opened the exhibition.