The debate of whether art imitates life or life imitates art is as old as philosophy. Even great thinkers like Aristotle have added their voices, taking sides in this raging debate.

But we are here not to talk about Aristotle and those erudite ancients who were not even paid to think. We are talking about Jean-Marie Vianney Munezero.

Munezero is a visual artist par excellence. But as you will later discover, he’s a highly talented artist who rose from a humble background but is now busy creating great pieces of artworks showing how art depicts the intricacies of life, and through his paintings, he tries to provide solutions to how these can be solved.

Munezero stepped into this world 26years ago. But instead of finding a peaceful paradise where people love each other as one unit called human beings, his early childhood was fraught with one disaster after another.

First, while he was still very young to fully grasp the nuances of life, his parents separated. This sent his life into a spin. The outcome of this early setback is that he had to drop out of school.

But then, in times of trouble is when a genius is born. Instead of mourning his sorrows, he hit his neighborhood, collecting discarded materials like clothes and wires to make bicycles and toy cars for his friends. Most of the time, they provided him some little money for his efforts which he used in buying his basic needs.

"I had to learn being independent when I was still very young because I had no parents to take care of my needs,” he says.

His agony didn’t end with the separation of his parents. Munezero says that even his blood relatives rejected him.

The height of this, he says, is when his maternal grandfather blatantly told him one day to go and look for his father when he went to visit his mother. The mother had taken refuge at her father’s home after their acrimonious separation.

To make his miseries even worse, one day, this grandfather at one point threatened him with death.

Munezero endured all these troubles with fortitude. Life was not kind to him, but there was nothing he could do.

When he was only 15, he decided he had had enough with his vindictive extended family and moved to Kigali to look for work, of any kind. The first job he got was in the construction industry, as a ‘hand.’

But during this time, he was also looking for opportunity to profit from his art passion. Then one day, he came to Ivuka Arts Center in Kacyiru. He was immediately taken in because of his prowess in sculpturing. But later, he thirsted for more. From the artists who he found there, he did his apprenticeship in painting under them.  

"I didn’t have money for materials but I credit William Ngendandumwe and Tony Cyizanye (founder of Yego Arts Center, Nyarutarama) who helped me to develop my skills. They helped me to start my painting journey,” Munezero reminisces.

From his skills and experience, he has now become among the most recognized artists, not only at Ivuka where he found sanctuary to learn a new form of art but also the entire country.

His art

Most of Munezero’s work call for order in this crazy world. Hanging at the walls of Ivuka Art Gallery are several pieces of his paintings that can find home in any museum in the world.

For example, there’s this piece titled Numwanankundi. He paints the portrait of a lonely man sitting forlornly at a deserted dusty street. The man is sitting down, his right hand cupping his chin, his legs crossed. Tears are trickling from his gloomy eyes. This man is evidently, literally, at the edge of death and might be wishing for the Grim Reaper to come and pick him away, hence do away with his troubles.

"I wanted to shock the consciousness of noble human soul about the plight of suffering that people go through. Why is this man lonely and nobody is coming to his rescue? Human beings have totally lost their souls to help,” he quips.

But then, this man could have been him had he not decided to cast off his own suffering earlier in life to seek life-changing opportunity.

One Direction Walkers is another painting on canvas depicting a group of people walking forward in one direction. They are happy people, young and old. They are headed to paradise, the Promised Land, where the grass is greener, a land of milk and honey, wherever, but a land of opportunity.

Amidst all this cheerfulness is one odd man who turns his back, like Lot’s wife and remains in the shadow (the painting depicts this). But people just pass him, not bothering with his "rebellion”. They are moving to good life and only one person shouldn’t discourage them.

The painting depicts another man standing, looking at this "rebel”. Perhaps he’s asking himself why this man has decided to rebel.

When Munezero asked me to give my view on this man, I told him that this is a clear case of people who are backward, a quintessential case of a person who, when others want to prosper, they want to retrogress.

"Really? he asked me. He then asked me to form another scenario in my mind but nothing could come out. The man was simply a renegade to development.

But with his soft voice, he told me that this man might have seen what the stampeding mass hasn’t.

"People always rush to new things oblivious of dangers that face them ahead. All they have in their minds is that new environment means happiness and bliss all through. It’s when they reach there that they realise they should have stayed behind,” he says.

This reminded me of the gold rush to Europe and Middle Eastern countries where people who rush there eventually wish they shouldn’t have made the journey

Don’t Live Alone is a mixed media painting of a family of five who have been living in seclusion in the forest. Poverty is written on their faces. Some of them are half naked.

Munezero says of the artwork, "you can’t find happiness when you decide to estrange yourself from other people.”

Work with children

Munezero has also launched a project where, every Sunday, he teaches a group of 35 children how to paint. The project’s name is Intango Art Kids.

The idea started as a joke. He says that one day; a child came to Ivuka and watched him how he was painting for several minutes. Then after he had finished, the child requested him that he also wanted to be taught how to paint.

Munezero just did that. He gave the child a piece of small canvas and they painted together. The child happily went back with it home

In the evening the following day he came back with two more friends and he did as the other day. They painted and they cheerily went back home with the canvases.

The following day, these friends came back, but with their friends. Things were now getting hot for him. He lacked paints, simply he lacked materials.

What could he do, since he couldn’t chase them away? He approached the manager of Ivuka, Charleys who provided him with some money to purchase some materials.

"These children paint and I try to find a place I can sell their paintings so that we may buy additional materials. It’s not easy at the moment but there’s nothing I can do,” he says.

His main challenge, he says, is where to get material like paints and canvases. He approached the founder of Ivuka, Collins Sekajugo who provided him with money to buy some materials but these are not sustainable.

But he says despite the challenges, he is determined to soldier on because it’s at this age that a child can form in his or her mind what he wants to do in future.

With his early tortuous life and weaving through to become a great artist that generally portray what life should be; truly JMV Munezero’s art imitates his life.