In a quest to keep legendary musician Ray “Chikapa” Phiri’s spirit alive, the Ray Phiri Art Institute and Toda Holdings are showcasing his work at the Mbombela Art Gallery.
Phiri, a co-founder of internationally-acclaimed band Stimela, died in July 2017 following a short illness.
The exhibition, called Dance For Me and curated by Bongani Madondo, has seen fans marvelling at his guitar, stage outfits and pictures from his childhood to his time as a performer.
The exhibition started on Friday at the Mbombela Art Gallery and will close on May 29.
“Our aim is to pay tribute to our artists both alive and those who have passed on. This is to create a way to have Ray Phiri’s story told and archived. We tell his life through visual representation and photography,” said Madondo.
He said they were planning to also take the exhibition to other towns around the country.
Phiri's wife Rabelani said being part of the exhibition was helping her to heal.
“It was a very painful exercise to make this moment possible because there were many sacrifices and doomsayers. It’s twofold for me, there’s a part of me where this is a healing process, it’s also affirming that although the physical journey of him has come to an end, we can use the work he gave to us and to the world and go beyond what he managed to do, and create our own memories.
“This notion that Ray was a library himself is showing now. Some of the work comes from different media archives and also articles he kept himself from different publications as far as back in the 80s,” said Rabelani.
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