Cutting the Figure: African contemporary figurative painters
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Explore the compelling work of African contemporary figurative artists. In the last ten years, an array of new contemporary voices have emerged in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Nigeria, voices that explore notions of self-representation, sexuality, human intimacy, and the ‘other’.
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'Cutting the Figure' brings together figurative works that foreground the body’s relationship to the socio-political environment of Africa. The exhibition celebrates how African artists, from diverse cultures and traditions, consider and immortalise the body.
At the centre of the exhibition are two intricate works by Turiya Magadlela, with their fragile, yet tensile, pantyhose material. ‘Untitled’ (2022), with its blue muted tones and highly suggestive forms, conveys a sense of sexual beauty, frailty, intimacy, and disquiet that was once the preserve of Lisa Brice. Helen Teede too, with ‘House Plants’ (2020), merges some of the intimacy of Brice’s early work with that of her fellow Zimbabwean Mishek Masamvu’s painterly mark marking. Teede, who is currently completing the Tracey Emin Art Residency in London, draws on the personal and poetic to create complex tableaux that convey the confusion and beauty of contemporary tristesse.
Option Nyahunzvi explores his sense of self via his Shona culture and plays with the sense of cultural inheritance. Anthropomorphism plays at the centre of his work, making apparent the phantasmagoria of the real and religious. Tafadzwa Masudi, who also hails from Zimbabwe, addresses issues surrounding the life of the migrant person and their existence in a liminal world. A balloon obscures the figure’s identity, creating a sense of present dislocation while offering hope. Tafadzwa Tega follows his fellow Zimbabwean with a sense of hope in a social setting reflecting aspirations and modernity.
Also on the exhibition are perennial favourites such as Cameron Platter, Banele Khoza and Craig Cameron-Mackintosh. Platter’s work engages with the animal in African myth and fable. In ‘Loving would be easy if your colours were my dreams (Diptych)’, 2020 Platter plays with a sense of joy and an alternative underlying reality. Khoza in his 'Falling to Sleep' 2017-18, more overtly suggests something sinister with the forms of nightmarish sleep. Cameron-Mackintosh, however, produces a regal sense of African beauty in 'Horizon', 2021.
Among the works are those of two Nigerians, Chidinma Nnoli and Kelechi Nwaneri. Nnoli's deftly rendered paintings highlight womanhood in all its diversity. Nwaneri, by contrast, plays with fictional figures in landscapes, referencing West African iconography.
‘Cutting the Figure’ brings these compelling artists' practices into dialogue, offering a view of Africa that is both precarious and hopeful.
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TURIYA MAGADLELA
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Turiya Magadlela, Untitled, 2022, nylon and cotton pantyhose, thread and sealant on canvas, 150 x 150 cm -
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HELEN TEEDE
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CRAIG CAMERON-MACKINTOSH
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CHIDINMA NNOLI
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TURIYA MAGADLELA
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Turiya Magadlela, Eskhathini Series (Untitled number 4), 2018, oil paint, nylon and cotton pantyhose, thread and sealant on canvas, 120 x 240 cm
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BANELE KHOZA
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CAMERON PLATTER
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Cameron Platter, Loving would be easy if your colors were my dreams (Diptych), 2020, acrylic on canvas in the artist’s frame, 180 x 130 cm (each)
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TAFADZWA TEGA
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TAFADZWA MASUDI
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KELECHI NWANERI
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OPTION DZIKAMAI NYAHUNZVI
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Available Works
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