Haji Chilonga: an ode to Dar es Salaam

Haji Chilonga: an ode to Dar es Salaam

‍Banji Choma

The oeuvre of Haji Chilonga encapsulates fractions and fragments of daily life, often observed and embellished in the form of obscurely expressed or abstracted acrylic works on paper and canvas. Bridging the realms of imagination and reality, his works portray figures—human, animal, and plant—within vignettes that are deeply rooted in the sociocultural, geographical and ecological tapestry of cities and towns. 

Born in 1969 in Mtwara, in the southern region of Tanzania, Chilonga hails from a lineage rooted in claywork and blacksmithing. His mother, a potter of Makuwa heritage, pays homage to her ancestry by working with earthen clays and pigments. The Makuwa of Tanzania pinch and coil clay—harvested from the banks of rivers like the Ruvuma, in Mtwara—into cooking pots marked with geometric symbols and scripts. Red ochre pigments are crushed and smeared onto the carved and sculpted wooden faces of ceremonial masks. Through his father and grandfather, his paternal lineage carries strong traditions rooted in smithing; smelting and forging iron into axes and knives used by the community. 

Chilonga attentively, yet subtly, embeds his family legacy into his practice in a way which pays homage to his beginnings and his rooting. Through the mediums of clay sculpture, drawing and painting, Chilonga’s contemporary storytelling is enriched with layers of historical and present-day significance. His artistic talents, which were apparent at a young age, were refined during the late '80s when he migrated from Mtwara to Dar es Salaam in search of the opportunities that capital cities promise. In the city, he found work as a commercial sign painter, mostly working on promotional mural adverts for popular local and international brands. 

At that time, the art scene in Dar es Salaam and the rest of the country was taking shape, moulded through a variety of influences. In 1990, when Chilonga intentionally decided to trade the surfaces of walls for canvas and assume the role of the fine artist, he sought to learn, finding artistic inspiration in the local community. This led to his discovery of the work of Tanzanian elders such as Raza Mohamed and Robino Ntila, who both began their respective painting and printmaking practices in the 1960s. 

In the 2000s, Chilonga’s curiosity for learning saw him travel to a number of key institutions and art spaces in East Africa, Southern Africa, and Europe alike. In 2001, he was part of the inaugural group of 20 international artists invited by Rafiki Arts Trust as part of their International Artists’ Workshop. The gathering, which took place in a historic fort in Bagamoyo, introduced Chilonga to the concept of residencies and summer schools; in 2007 and 2014 he attended the Salzburg International Summer Academy in Austria. This further broadened his ability to interlace popular elements of fine art practices and techniques he encountered in Europe at the time. 

During this foundational decade, Chilonga’s formative practice of sign painting and commercial art was morphed into experimental fine artworks informed both by his artistic genealogy as an East African figurative painter as well as popular avant-garde European styles and movements such as cubism and impressionism. 

By gathering and merging techniques gained over 30 years of practice, Chilonga brings to life the wide range of vivid palettes and experiences of the inhabitants of the spaces through which he too moves. Captured in the works are the woven tapestries and textiles of hazy urban landscapes, vibrant hues of azure and cyanide yellows find expression in the towering headwraps and billowing hijabs adorning women. Terracotta browns and earthen reds are speckled across the hides of herds of Ankole Watusi, a longhorn cattle breed of East and Central Africa, treading paths through tall browning grass. 

Chilonga’s work is telling of the drier landscapes on the peripheries of the cities, detached from the tightly knit plastic and concrete structures of a growing coastal city. The bold techniques and textured brushstrokes he employs, as in the painting Bega kwa Bega (date unknown), highlight the artist’s intentional rebellion against realism. In the piece, a fish depicted in both abstract and realist techniques swims through shades of blue, grey, black, and white. The varied brushstrokes evoke the movement of water, reinforcing the aquatic theme, and adding to the painting's dynamic quality, making it feel alive and in motion.

In an untitled series of monochromatic pencil sketches, the absence of colour and heavy strokes, as the signature technique in his paintings, are instead expressed as an evocative drawing technique in which light but repetitive strokes on paper pulsate with a sense of movement and vitality. Continuing the stilling of the motions of his daily surroundings, Chilonga presents works conceived between Dar es Salaam and Stone Town on the island of Zanzibar. The artworks mirror fragments of the realities of these spaces and their inhabitants. 

‍Untitled I (2020) portrays a scene of stilled motion and sound. In the sketches, subtle homages to the abstract techniques used by Raza Mohamed are pencilled into the quasi-cubist crowd of figures. The tall headwraps of the women, a recurring motif in Chilonga’s paintings, are dotted throughout the frame, making reference to the popularity of this cultural accessory. Within the gathering, he captures realistically detailed men, their heads adorned with kufi, hunching over their instruments and playing to the hazy crowd. Resting between the clutching fingers of one of the musicians is the long and slender neck of the oud—an instrument central to Taarab, a popular Tanzanian music with influence from the Great Lakes of Africa, the Middle East and India, much like the country itself. The piece details the abundance of local talent found in communal areas, such as the pockets of local bars which spill over with the sounds of the coastal capital city. Here, the stringed melodies of the oud meet the rhythmic thumping of the goblet-shaped ngoma; the chatter of the crowd seamlessly accompanies the Kiswahili poetry in an ode to love—an ode to Dar es Salaam.

In another Untitled (2020) work, Chilonga’s delicately choreographed pencil technique captures the whirling motion of steel drums being pushed down narrow streets by little boys orchestrating a metallic escalation of sounds. Grounded in a symphonic reality of everyday life in the streets of Dar es Salaam, the drawing acts as a portal which elicits attention to melodies of the mundane. 

A third Untitled (2020) work is a cityscape from the interiors of Stone Town, the oldest part of Zanzibar City, the capital of the semi-autonomous Tanzanian archipelago. In the sketch, Chilonga details the intimate relationship between Stone Town’s diverse inhabitants and its historic architecture. Influenced by Middle Eastern visual culture, expressed in places like Muscat, the ornately fretted nineteenth-century balconies of Mji Mkongwe, ‘the old town’, were crafted from mangrove timber and built into the coralline ragstone the buildings under the Omani rule of Zanzibar. In his composition, these empty balconies stand elevated above the narrow interior bazaar streets of Stone Town, where bicycles rattle across uneven paving stones. The intermittent gatherings of people lean on shop windows discussing the affairs of the week and sit on cornerstones gazing past their sandals.  

Overall, Chilonga’s work serves as a bridge between imagination and reality, using a range of techniques and mediums to communicate and emote the mundane. His art often blends elements of realism with abstract forms, inviting viewers to explore the boundaries between the tangible world and the artist's creative vision. 

‍Cover artwork: Haji Chilonga, Untitled, 2020. Pencil on paper,  42 × 29.7 cm. 

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