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Mustafah Dhada was born and brought up in Mozambique. He spent nearly eleven years in Asia as a monk before studying sculpting under abstract and neo-representationalist masters. He got his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1987. In 1984 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London. Dhada's works are to be found in collections internationally: The United States, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Switzerland, and Mozambique. Winner of several juried exhibition awards, Dhada was a Fulbrighter in 1995 to Mozambique where he sketched and held exhibitions of his work in Maputo. He is currently working on a how-to book, YOU TOO CAN SCULPT! The nineteen eighties proved to be years of artistic uncertainty for Dhada, a period of turmoil and despair in search of a creative identity uniquely his. And it was a good thing too! Today Dhada's sculptures have emerged stronger, powerfully reflective, teasingly subtle in manipulating empty spaces as an integral part of experiencing sculpture as a three dimensional art form. His works compel you to touch and caress them. They are impregnated with inner organic compactness but express this externally with tensile irruptive vitality. They seek the chalice of life, the liberation of the self from within. Dhada calls his work Sensuous Abstractionism because it attempts to fuse his life's temporal trilogy - the raw carvings of his African childhood, the sinuous rotundity of Vedic expressions in stone and the poise and grace of European representational forms. For more on his writing and publications, visit the Human Values and Development and the Writing and Film sections of INSPIRE on this website. (Click on INDEX in menu bar above for complete selection.) For purchase and exhibit information, contact the artist at his studio: SICA Virtual Gallery © SICA 2000 |