Johannesburg

STEVENSON is pleased to present Mawande Ka Zenzile's eponymous solo show Mawande Ka Zenzile. This is Ka Zenzile's third solo exhibition with the gallery, and his first in Johannesburg.

Mawande Ka Zenzile consists of new paintings and sculptures, video work and a performance with up-and-coming musician Larissa Johnson. The exhibition sees the continuation of Ka Zenzile's use of cultural references to confront history, economic systems and political ideologies.

Ka Zenzile writes:

In this body of work I'm interrogating political and social issues such as racism, capitalism and colonialism and the impact they have created. For me art becomes a space for contemplation where new allegories meet the old ones, and out of this fusion I develop different ways to expose how power works in our society and histories. In this exhibition I continue using iconographic images; I borrow them from their original context and use them as materials in my own work to convey hidden meanings about the complex nature of our society.

With materials such as cow dung and earth on canvas, sticks, stones and mud bricks, Ka Zenzile's work draws attention to his heritage as a conceptual and contextual frame of reference. Motifs from popular culture, Western art history and various other sources are fused in his artistic practice, highlighting and critiquing everyday dualities and stereotypes that have come to exist as the norm.

Ka Zenzile was born in Lady Frere, Eastern Cape, in 1986. He has a BA Fine Art degree (2014) from Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, where he is currently completing his MA Fine Art. Previous solo exhibitions are Statecraft (2015) and Experimentation: All Hell Break Loose (2014), both at Stevenson, Cape Town; Autobiography of Mawande Ka Zenzile: Iingcuka ezombethe iimfele zeegusha at VANSA, Cape Town (2011) and Crawling Nation at the AVA (2009). Recent group exhibitions include Material Matters at the Institute of Contemporary Art Indian Ocean, Port Louis, Mauritius (2015); and Between the Lines at Michaelis Galleries (2013).

The exhibition opens on Thursday 4 February 2016, from 6pm to 8pm.

Ka Zenzile will conduct a walkabout at Stevenson Johannesburg on 5 February 2015 at 12pm.