CAPITAL: The Voice of Business Issue 1, 2015 | Page 15

Self-investment, self-education
and self-motivation are key
concepts that have enabled Muzi
Gigaba to invest creatively in his
career as an artist.
WORDS BY

Debbie Turrell

A

rtists are entrepreneurs; and
entrepreneurs can be artists.
They are makers and producers
— doers and dreamers who see
past the horizon and possess a vision for
something new. Often, they question and
challenge conventional thinking with their
innovations.
Like many artists and entrepreneurs,
Muzi Gigaba, a ceramicist and print maker
completing his Master’s in Fine Arts at
UKZN Pietermaritzburg, is self-made.
“Self-investment is a key idea for me,” he
says. “I am self-educated. I had no formal
training. Instead, I apprenticed myself to
the internationally well-known ceramicist
Clive Sithole, and for three years I learnt
the basic techniques of working with clay
by observing him.”
“As an artist you can’t rely on funding
or sponsorship, because it makes you too
vulnerable,” says Gigaba.
“You have to be self-motivated and use
whatever you have creatively to invest in
your own future,” he explains — a lesson
that entrepreneurs know all too well.
Ideas around investing and saving, in
a broader sense, come across strongly in
Gigaba’s work.
His creations are prompted by the
Udu, a West African side-hole percussion
instrument derived from clay pots used for
carrying and storing water. It is believed
that a potter from the Ibo tribe dropped
one of his vase-shaped water vessels and

e entrepreneurs

Capital | Issue 1 |

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