Simphiwe Ndzube1 collaborationNdzube’s practice is absurd, joyful and conceptually weighty. He works across painting and sculpture, often fusing 2D canvases with 3D forms. In his sculpture, charismatic figures stand, flail, and dance with exaggerated hips and stomachs. Made out of second-hand shirts, ties and suit-trousers, the works evoke the archetype of the African Dandy, as well as the street style of the artist’s home, Masiphumelele, a township in Cape Town. In Ndzube’s paintings, surreal compositions depict arid landscapes and macabre human creatures, as if Francis Bacon had painted the Grinch. The race and gender of the characters is often ambiguous, shifting between human, animal and fantastical beast. Influenced by magical realist literature, along with race theorists such as Frantz Fanon, Ndzube creates new forms of myth that examine race and power throughout history as well as today.
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