Zandile Tshabalala exhibits for the first time in SA with BKhz Gallery: Pandering to the art world is no longer a prerequisite for success. Zandile Tshabalala has proved this in the last two years by exhibiting abroad before coming home
Zandile Tshabalala’s upcoming exhibition captures scenes of black life and love. I first officially met Tshabalala at the height of lockdown in 2020. In a short space of time, from 2020 and 2022, the Soweto-born artist and a recent graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand in fine art has become a force of nature in the artworld.
Pleasure and rest: Paintings by Zandile Tshabalala focus on black women in intimate and vulnerable moments such as ‘The Act of Self-Love: Cleansing’ “She has been confident of the story that she wanted to tell and represent, which is the African, black woman experience and that has always been her aim. She’s been executing it from the beginning and keeps getting better and better. It’s without a doubt that she was born to be a superstar,” says Nonqgunga-Coupez, who discovered Tshabalala on Instagram and flew to South Africa in mid-2019 to consign work.
Her paintings reached the shores of Europe long before she had completed her second year at university. Tshabalala’s monochromatic paintings are inspired, for the most part, by French surrealist painter Henri Rousseau. The starting point was to familiarise and learn about portraiture and figuration in art history. She later decided to insert herself and other people in her paintings. One could say the inclusion of the black body is not only a recurring theme in her work but is also critical to her practice.
Tshabalala is unapologetically refusing to pander to the restrictions that artists are expected to accept, especially black women artists. It takes a while for anyone interested to learn about Tshabalala’s work — created mostly in acrylic and depicting black womanhood, black love, sensuality and sexuality — to acclimatise to the sharp imagery and precise messaging.
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