Cinga Samson, South African Fine Artist
Cinga Samson
About:
Cinga Samson (b1986, Cape Town) is a painter and installation artist based in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa. Samson has participated in several group shows, including ‘In the night I remember’ curated by Kabelo Malatsie (Stevenson, Johannesburg); ‘Our Fathers’ curated by Kirsty Cockerill and Chantal Louw (AVA Gallery, Cape Town) and ‘Strata’ at Greatmore Studios, where he completed a residency in 2011. His first solo exhibition, ‘Rusting Iron’, was held at the AVA Gallery in Cape Town, 2011. ‘Thirty Pieces of Silver’ was Samson’s first exhibition at blank projects, and his largest solo show to date.
“When I create an artwork, I want the results to feel secret, almost holy and distant. I always picture the audience of my work standing in front of it, looking what I have put in front of them, whether it’s the image of flowers or figures…, unclear as to what it’s all about and also having a sense that what’s in the images is something from a different world that they don’t belong to, maybe from another time or perhaps somewhere, where no one goes. Being from a family of many male figures (having nine brothers) made it natural for me to use them as constant symbols in my work. The flowers are sensitive – almost contrary to man – and close to my heart, and I find them interesting as symbols and appealing in many different ways.”
Samson believes that, consciously or unconsciously, and without being directly political, his artworks engage with the frustrations of young black Africans and their sense of displacement within the nationalistic narrative of social cohesion. He is interested in their disillusionment with their institutions (religious, educational, etc) that appear to be maintaining the status quo by regulating and pacifying rather than furthering the radical development so longed for. Samson’s process includes gathering ideas from locals about their environment and their pervading sense of invasion from both ‘outsiders’ and visible remnants of the past. He is intrigued by the myths and conspiracy theories invented by the community to impose order on their world (this interest helps to fuel the sense of the fantastique in his art), paralleled by the basic human instincts that drive our existence, leading him to question whether we are above the natural laws of the animal kingdom that dictate the ‘survival of the fittest’, or if our social hierarchy is in fact governed by them to some degree.
The wealth and power that remain out of reach for South Africa’s black majority – even as the spectre of the ‘rainbow nation’ wanes – are subjects that Samson revisits. For him, the works “are driven from a reality that we all face in our own ways”. However, refusing simple binary explanations about the fragility and paranoia of both power and freedom, for Samson, “the works represent something far beyond race. They are more about experiences of being an African in this day”.(text website artist)
