Amina,
two carved wooden puppets, furniture, video.
Heads of David and Goliath carved by the fathers Barnabas Ndudzo and Morgan Johnson (1952), hands carved by their sons, Shepherd Ndudzo and Chido Johnson (2019). Two channel videos documenting their first performance (2019).
Project Assistance:
Puppeteers: Leslie Rogers and Manal Shoukair.
Filming and Editing: Ana Montesdeoca and Sarah Craven.
Costumes fro Puppets: Shoshanna Utchenik.
Cushions for the found 1950s side tables: Adriana Pavon.
a story about the puppets,
All my life, two heads sat on my father’s book shelves. One head was carved by my father, and the other by his friend Mr Barnabas Ndudzo back in the 1950-60s. They were meant to be puppet heads for a play on David and Goliath, a narrative taken from the Old Testament Bible. I remember my father tell me when he received the head from Mr Ndudzo, he thought it was too precious to be a puppet, so they become sculptures in my childhood homes sitting with us we read, played or ate in the seating room. It is not until I met Shepherd Ndudzo, the son of Mr Barnabas Ndudzo, who like his father, is also a sculptor, that Amina was realized. When I suggested it Shepherd and my father, they both were excited about the idea. The puppets had to perform!
The story of David and Goliath was very relevant in the times of our fathers as it is now, where social political / economical and racial injustice still exists. My father was a political cartoonist and a puppeteer. Both my parents did not hesitate to express their disapproval of the political times and countered the system through their actions. My father did it through his puppetry and his political cartoons which eventually led him to be deported from the apartheid regime called “Rhodesia.”