Sthenjwa Luthuli creates vibrant wood-block paintings featuring headless figures and intricate motifs. His work serves as a metaphor for South African community experiences, reflecting on spiritualism and societal constraints. Luthuli's upcoming exhibition, Umkhangu, showcases works from 2010 to 2015 and utilizes African cosmology to explore concepts of identity and destiny, such as interpreting birthmarks as ancestral connections. The exhibition opens on September 11 at the Norval Foundation in Cape Town.
Through swirling ribbons of color, headless figures dance among densely patterned backdrops, their hands grasping and open. Dressed in tight, form-fitting costumes, these anonymous protagonists are bound by their elaborately carved environments, a metaphor for the experience of South African communities.
Luthuli is known for his wood-block paintings brimming with vibrant color and texture. Through a meditative, meticulous process of gouging small pieces of MDF, he renders dense, intricate motifs that envelop his figures in a swath of markings.
The artist is particularly interested in African spiritualism and the tenuous relationship between freedom and control for minority communities.
His first institutional solo exhibition, Umkhangu uses African cosmology and symbolism as its guide, considering how a birthmark can be seen as an ancestral presence or a sign of one's destiny.
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