09 Jul 2023

Plagiarism has crippled most artists’ skills and ability to think outside the box.

Chief adjudicator, Velias Ndaba made the observation at the 15^th Annual National Art, Basket and Craft Exhibition held in Gaborone on Friday.

 The exhibition was part of the National Arts Festival (NAF) themed, The Creative Economy: Botswana’s Economic Future Redefined.

Ndaba, who is also a full-time solo artist and former coordinator of Thapong Visual Arts Centre said the tendency to plagiarise had not only degraded and severely affected the reputation of the artists, but also tarnished Botswana’s image in international markets.

Art is all about research and learning new ideas, he added.

However, some artists, he said, had a tendency to pick other people’s work from magazines and the internet and present it as theirs, failing to acknowledge the source, which jeopardises the artists’ credibility.

Ndaba further stated that plagiarism reduced opportunities, critical thinking, growth and discouraged one from producing new ideas and exploring other ways that could enable them to produce unique insights into their work.

He also voiced a concern about the recurrence of artistic concepts, encouraging artists to strive for collaboration in order to share and create fresh ideas.

As arts have always been recognised to have the capacity to save people from hunger.

Ndaba therefore emphasised the need for artists to take advantage of government programmes to nurture and fully unleash their abilities.

He also stressed the importance of valuing one’s professional development, saying that artists should not only show commitment when competitions were around the corner.

“We have seen some artists submit shoddy work just to try their luck in the competitions.

This is because they do not take the profession seriously, and they only mushroom when they see an opportunity they are likely to benefit from.”

Ndaba further stated that while technology had taken over the space, artists should continue to embrace the use of traditional crafting instruments, stating that some artistic activities came out best through the usage of traditional tools.

Meanwhile, Sylvester Keweno from Molepolole took third place in the Fine Arts under the painting category with his piece titled Fading Memories.

Under the same category, Letsha Mosinyi from Palapye occupied second place with her art piece titled Emang Basadi and Andrew Matsima from Gaborone took the top spot with his masterpiece titled Make Hay.

Position three received P6 000 cash award, position two received P8 000 and position one received P10 000.

Lebogang Kefithile of Francistown was selected as national winner in the wood sculpturing category and received a cash reward of P10 000.

His teamwork themed Wood Sculpture was constructed from a motswere log. ENDS