Mongezi Ncaphayi, South Africa
Come on, now, 2013.
About:
Ncaphayi was born in 1983 and graduated with a Diploma in Art and Design from Ekurhuleni East College, as well as a certificate from Artist Proof Studio. Ncaphayi’s work explores issues of politics, power, gender and social atrocities that govern daily lives. It is also an unearthing of a collective history of a people displaced from the homelands into an urban system and landscape, thus raising issues of colonisation of the individual: physically and psychologically; and the simulation of other cultures imposed. The area of focus is generation gaps; personal relationships; the inheritance of our countries’ history and the significance of roles of male and female in our society, comparing between the past and present. (text Institut Français, SA)
Compound, 2013.
Also a jazz musician, the artist says he uses music as a tool in his work for dealing with situations, as would the migrant workers of times gone by, reminiscing about their homelands.
Find My Way, 2013.
Recorda Me, 2013.
Alone Together, 2013.
Mongezi says “I have always worked with the theme of migration. But before, my work used to be more representational. After receiving an exchange grant to go to the United States, I went to Boston to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. I got there and people were doing very abstract works. It was kind of like: “I’m home — this is what I want to do.”
