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INSIGHT: Week 1 | Phumelele Tshabalala
17 - 23 June -
INSIGHT is a new online platform presented by Pippy Houldsworth Gallery debuting work by a different artist each week. New work made during lockdown will be highlighted alongside a video studio visit presented by the artist.
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Phumelele Tshabalala's practice focuses on the human figure, examining the body as a site of expression and resistance. His work constructs new spaces where imagination collides with reality, drawing on Edward Soja's notion of Thirdspace to approach a postition of radical possibility and openness. Making use of found imagery from newspapers, magazines and online media, and combining these with his own photography and personal experience, the artist reassesses historical, cultural and social narratives, centring those that touch on identity, race and social injustice. Underpinning his practice are the notions of Flow, Layering, and Rupture, the three foundational elements of Hip-Hop translated into a visual methodology. Tshabalala creates striking surfaces alive with colour, pattern and texture, employing a wide range of media and techniques from oil, acrylic, and spray paints to printing, collage, carving and embossing. Graphic and painterly figures shift in scale and collide with flat planes of colour, bold patterns and twisting organic forms. This approach encompasses the fluidity and complexity of collective black identity, reassessing its history and creating its future.
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I am amongst the generation of artists who consider black artistry and all its voices. We [...] reassess the possession and authorship of the various shades of our Blackness. We are both subject and object, for there is no I in we.
Phumelele Tshabalala, 2020
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About Phumelele Tshabalala
Phumelele Tshabalala (b. 1987, Johannesburg, South Africa) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He studied Fine and Applied Arts at Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, specialising in Printmaking and Painting, and holds an MFA in Visual Arts from SUNY Purchase College, New York. Recent exhibitions include International Print Center, New York (2017); Pjazza Kastilija, Valetta (2017); Momenta Gallery, New York (2016) and Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, New York (2015). Tshabalala has presented artist talks at Neuberger Museum, New York (2016) and Hudson Valley Center of Contemporary Art (2015). He was selected as a finalist for the 2017 Artraker Award.
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