Page 6 - Andrew
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ANDREW NTSHABELE
understand the root causes of the using is contemporary newspapers
current inner-city decay. “My work linked with articles about Covid-19
is a social commentary on the and also vintage newspapers with
socio-economic challenges that the great head lines. Besides this I have
majority of Black South Africans been working with and on old letters
face in a post-colonial South Africa. and postcards which gave me a lot
of joy. My aim in my current work
My paintings incorporate more than is to highlight the past as well as
one medium, they are a fusion of the present. I believe and know that
collage and acrylic paint, and are the old world as we know it , is the
produced from photographs I take thing of the past...we are entering a
on my daily travels around the inner digital age..now more than ever , is
city and its outskirts” Andrew says. important to preserve history and
Andrew Ntshabele, born 1986, Andrew has experienced a lot of document it. I am fascinated and
lives and works in the inner city of challenges which COVID-19 brought excited as I do this through and with
Johannesburg. His art is informed by and lockdowns as well as restrictions my art.”
his environment as he observes the didn’t make life easy.
world around him with critical eyes.
His mixed-media paintings – a fusion “After the Covid-19 pandemic hit the
of collage and acrylic – depict what entire world, I felt that people need
he sees and lives in every day. some art and some sort of joy in this
Andrew was born in the small rural challenging time.My new and current
town of Moruleng in the North artworks depict a more joyful feel, I
West Province of South Africa and have been exploring working in large
moved with his family to the city at and medium scale works primarily,
a young age. He studied Art at the the material I have been
University of Johannesburg and was
awarded his BTech degree, majoring
in painting, in 2013.
The image shows Andre Ntshabele’s
“I have lived in Johannesburg since solo-exhibition in Berlin 2020
the age of four and have witnessed
its physical, socio-economic and
political changes post-Apartheid,” he
explains. “I still live in the inner city
where I’m confronted by poverty,
pollution and urban decay every day.
I’m interested in the people who live
in this environment, in the negative
effects of rapid urbanisation and
how they put a strain on the people I
encounter and interact with daily.”
Andrew’s works investigate the
social predicament of the city to
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