Spanning painting, sculpture, performance, and installation, Thokozani’s commitment to historically situated and locally sourced materials addresses the complexities of continuity of cultural heritage within the contested “South Africa” identity.
Mthiyane, whose work playfully subverts traditional art- and exhibition-making, is a Johannesburg based artist who is largely influenced by his time spent under the tutelage of artists Sfiso KaMkame and Thami Jali.
And undeniably, his work’s evolution has brilliantly underscored the profound contributions of many other South African artists in the visual arts, and by fusing painting and poetry with artistic flare, his language has probed a variety of compelling social incompetencies.
And scanning through his profiles on social media one finds a kaleidoscope of works, once is confronted by a plethora or images of his artworks, making one yearn for an opportunity to visit the artists studio.
He once asserted that his works are only premeditated up to maybe the first gesture. This is a trait the lurks throughout his seeming unfinished and self-finishing works.
Taking a glance at his sculptures, some seem crude yet transcendent, intertwining material and immaterial elements, creating a space where the visible and the invisible collide, offering an encounter that is at once immediate, uncanny, are transcendent and mind-boggling.
A nuanced analysis is needed to provide further insights into his many reflections on social issues, and his disobedience to the status quo is an affective and ethical stance—an act of repair within the damaged self-reflective world of black artistic practice often strangled by economic expectations and philosophical crudity.
Works such IF THE LAND WAS A MAN, Umzabalazo Womphefumulo, Isiphambano nomqhele wameva, how they reimagine the crucifix, invoke a spiritual contradiction as many associate the cross as an emblem of salvation not oppression subjugation.
We confront paintings documenting spiritual themes picturing worshippers and their revered holy figures juxtaposed with an alternative abstraction steeped in a multitude of historical references; works that unsettlingly interrogate the politics and power dynamics implied by the yoke, symbolic of how religion has become for black people.
Among his haunting sculptures are two which I have titled The Bone Machine (reminiscent of Tom Waits and his work as both musician poet and artists dabbling in various expressive techniques.
There is another that resembles THE HEART and another sculpture he titled Portrait (v), and one wonders if these are self-portraits. One such portraits done the severed dreadlocks that were a feature of Thokozani’s inner persona.
Ukubika komphefumulo exhibits an impulsive spirit yet intensely edgy and drawing on threads of the unknowable designs of chance, and what emerges is a frames of sundered materials (pieces of stretched skin) turning turned blue by either the cold or decay.
Without taking the artistic process too lightly and detracting from its value in the context of deep exploration and self-expression, each piece a true expression of artistic individuality rooted in simplicity and spontaneity.
At his exhibitions, Mthiyane always causes a thrill among the audience, a performer and poet who is always keen on inferring textual and vocal anecdotes.
Besides his basic ideas, selection of topics and motifs, Mthiyane continues choose specific elements of art in addition to techniques and ways of composing paintings, his studio has become a place for the formation of unique workshops where artists, poets and musicians exchange experiences and inspire each other.
Although his art might seem to have began due to pure idleness, his is a concerted method creating unique hybrids of self-reflection and observations of the world’s hidden character.
Over time, his canvases grew to possess a certain individual artistic maturity and a clearly unique formula which is easily perceived; from metaphors of grief, symbols of contrition on disproportional figures in a specific setting rather realistically.
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Images From The Artist's Profiles
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