By IPS Correspondents
Kigali, Apr 2 1996 (IPS)

Human heads piled atop each other intertwined with whizzing loops? A lion devouring bundles of bamboo?

Such evocative images explode from the canvas of a talented Rwandan artist determined to capture the essence of the grief caused by the hurricane of bloodletting that left the east African nation littered with mass graves.

Epaphrodite Benemungu is part of a burst of rich and multi- faceted artistic expression that followed the eruption of genocide in 1994. He claims to have produced as many as 600 works. The artist has been recognised as an important painter in this country of ‘one thousand hills’.

“This artist is a rare talent,” notes ‘Rwanda Times’, a leading newspaper in the capital, Kigali. “He believes Man and Nature are one and the same thing.”

Ethnic tension which has dogged Rwanda since French colonial rule is close to Benemungu’s heart. Forced to flee his remote village in the Southern Butare District, he went into exile to escape genocide.

Now 42 years old, Benemungu who went to Burundi then Zaire. Returning home two years ago he found nothing but ruins. “I wanted something persuasive … (to represent) the horrific times we had gone through … (meaning) genocide.”

One painting is dedicated to “a bunch of machetes, the most atrocious weapon that was used by the infamous (extremists of the) Hutu (ethnic majority) Interahamwe militia,” as the artist explains.

Machetes, hand grenades, axes, clubs and guns were employed as instruments of death countrywide when Hutus triggered violence by attacking the Tutsi minority, leaving up to one million people dead.

Another work shows a lion devouring bundles of bamboo in the Volcano Range. It symbolises the deliverance from the pogrom effected by the Tutsi-dominated Rwanda Patriotic Army. Scenes seemingly devoid of violence or horror nonetheless underscore the total social disruption the killings caused. They explore themes such as sexuality and humanism.

This is evident in tableaux of market women, cranes dancing in a valley of papyrus on a tranquil, sunny morning, jubilant traditional dancers, drummers, and that of a woman milking a goat with a baby on her back.

“In our tradition, only men are allowed to milk cows,” explains Benemungu. “This time the woman who milks a goat portrays a sense of doom and damnation on a society which has inherited lots of widows and orphans. Genocide did away with the foundation of our society, but all is not lost.”

“The idea here is to depict genocide through a piece of art, not really a macabre one, because one cannot produce a purely macabre work,” he says.

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