If These Walls Could Talk is a project co-curated by myself and Zimbabwean artist Moffat Takadiwa. Comprising workshops, an artist residency, an exhibition, and a publication, the project took place in 2024 at Mbare Art Space (MAS), a community art space founded by Moffat. As the first public project initiated by MAS, “walls” functioned as both an inward-facing inquiry and an outward-facing invitation. Inwardly, the project asked: What exactly is this space, and how might it continue to exist? Outwardly, it invited the neighboring community to imagine the space’s past and future together, and to reorganize the spatial and social relations inside and outside the “walls.” From colonial architecture to community art space, the high red-brick walls may be read both as boundaries of discipline and control, and as infrastructure from which new possibilities can emerge. The project does not seek to provide definitive answers. Rather, it responds to a possibility through practice, thereby opening up a process through which the space continually redefines itself. In July, viewers will glimpse its silhouette beyond the glass walls of the Inside-Out Art Museum: if those walls elsewhere could talk, how might their voices be heard here and now, and what kinds of echoes might they stir?

In November 2018, just after Zimbabwe’s jacaranda season had ended, I traveled from South Africa to Harare for research. Since Moffat and several other young artists had their collective studio in Mbare, this neighborhood became the place I visited most often. At the time, what is now MAS was still known as “rags”, Marengenya in Shona, also referred to as Chiweshe, or as a leisure beer hall. Tall red-brick walls enclosed a space of nearly half a hectare, most of which had already fallen into disuse. One night, after an interview, I followed Moffat and two of his friends as they pushed open a narrow, heavy iron gate and entered the compound amid a sharp creaking sound. Semi-open pavilions stood scattered throughout the site; the ground was cracked, weeds grew from piles of rubble and corners of the walls, and benches left behind from the previous century were covered in dust. In this nearly ruined space, illuminated only by light from beyond the walls, Moffat described to me his vision for the future: which areas would become studios, how convenient the space would be once water and electricity were connected, and what kinds of activities might be held there. Only several years later, as I began to understand the history of these buildings and the surrounding community, did I realize what that moonlit moment had meant.

Mbare is located near the old industrial district south of the city center. It was the first “African Location” (later renamed a township) established in Harare after the colonial government promulgated the Native Urban Locations Ordinance in 1907. As in other colonial cities in Southern Africa, Harare was planned and spatially organized according to the principles of racial segregation from the very beginning of its urban development. White settlers occupied the city center and areas with well-developed infrastructure, while African and other non-white laborers were confined to densely populated settlements with poor living conditions. Almost simultaneously with the establishment of Mbare, a system of alcohol control known as the “Durban System” was also introduced. The colonial authorities incorporated alcohol consumption into racialized governance. By monopolizing the production and sale of traditional African beer, they turned municipal beer halls into the only legal places where African people were permitted to drink. As an important source of municipal revenue, this system became an economic engine that reinforced racial segregation, as well as an infrastructure for managing workers’ leisure time, disciplining social life, and organizing urban order.

The municipal beer outlets scattered across different communities in Harare are material remnants of this colonial system. As architecture designed to serve control, their spatial logic remains clearly legible: towering red-brick walls strictly separate inside from outside, while narrow entrances and enclosed layouts guide, restrict, and regulate people’s movement and gathering. Here, the wall is not merely an architectural element, but a technology of spatial governance. It determines who is allowed to enter, from where one may enter, and what kinds of activities may take place within. Yet the establishment of a power relation often also gives rise to forms of resistance against it. Existing alongside the official beer halls were shebeens hidden within the lanes and neighborhoods. Many women sustained their livelihoods through the private brewing and selling of beer, and these shebeens gradually became important spaces for political discussion, cultural activity, and social connection. Boundaries between the private and the public, the household and the community, were continually overlapped and reconfigured in these spaces. In the face of colonial police raids and suppression, what sustained these places was often not brick walls, but relations of proximity between people: shared information, networks of mutual care, and tacit ways of negotiating with the system. It was within this human infrastructure that the community created another kind of public space. A vast and rich social life that could not be contained by high walls continued to grow within the folds of grand historical narratives, shaping residents’ memories, understandings, and imaginations of the community.

As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the world, Zimbabwe’s lockdown measures further compressed the already limited space for public art. Yet artists in Harare once again transformed crisis into an opportunity to organize communities and build collective spaces. In different parts of the city, artist-led collective studios, community spaces, and public activities began to emerge, weaving together networks of artistic creation, exchange, mutual support, and everyday life amid uncertainty. When I returned to Mbare in 2021, the space before me had changed completely. The once-abandoned pavilions had been converted into studios; artists had used plastic woven fabric and discarded materials to repair and decorate the site; the air was filled with the busy sounds of cutting, drilling, conversation, and music. Inside the studios were piles of artworks, tools, pots and bowls, and unfinished plans. This was not only a place for artistic production, but also a site where artists lived, shared resources, exchanged knowledge, and passed on experience. Yet once the initial phase of construction came to an end, more difficult questions began to surface. Moffat and another co-founder of MAS, architect Nora Müller, were soon surrounded by the everyday demands of running the space: repairing the buildings, raising funds, maintaining networks, supporting young artists, and communicating with the community. It was in this context that they invited me into the conversation, to consider a more fundamental question: What exactly is Mbare Art Space?